##VIDEO ID:FiPgNMwVsl8## uh or never been an issue with our firm with any of the candids we Supply we're very thorough in finding out where they are and where they actually work from and haven't had too many people be deceptive about anything like that but uh a a reference or a background check as far as uh work workplace uh should that should come back on workplace verification we also have to be careful with Florida Sunshine Law and and letting the candidates know uh their employers know should they be you know we don't want to reveal them to their bosses too soon or whatever should they be leaving should not be to that point yet so it's a fine line to walk that's why we usually do it at the end of the process uh but hopefully that answers your question but how do you catch I mean how do you find because a person can be working at another city and have problems there and then when they come here we're seeing the problems that they had over there absolutely and so I I see what you're saying and so part of what what we do is is uh one we do a lot of research on where they're coming from we do uh internet search if there's something negative especially in a city that'll be on the internet we do our best to call people that we know uh that have interacted with those people say hey what do you think about that because honestly those are the best references ones that the candidates don't provide um and and the people that we know and have a a database that's easy to find hey this person worked with this person at this city let's call that person and say hey how good is Joe Smith how good is Jane Doe uh and and if they're like you know what there's just a lot there uh i' I'd stay away or they were awesome that you you could hire them again we have to be careful about not revealing too much about the candidates and blowing say blowing up their spot but letting people know that they're they're an active candidate in another search but it is it is a tricky line to follow but that is why you hire us to do the research and find out hey this is what's going on in this town this is what they've did we actually have them part of the essay questions is is what are your accomplishments here and and what have you done successful wise and so you could be able to find that out uh pretty quickly hey they they say they increased Revenue whatever it is uh they they reduced the budget or increased the budget uh they reduced you know Road uh traffic in the roads whatever it is uh we we have them put them on there so uh we allow them the to their successes but we also do a lot of research on the internet now within the 90 days that you said this takes would you be giving us updates in between that time we give you weekly updates we provide you with the c how many candidates we've reached out to how many we think how many have applied but of those that have applied how many are really viable and and we think realistic and good candidates we tell you what we're hearing hey the salary is a little low uh people would be interested had the salary been high or you know what we're hearing really good things we're getting a high response rate people are eager to move here they've heard good things about the village the salary is right whatever it is we provide you with that feedback on a weekly basis that's also how we measure hey how do we know that we're on the right track or we're providing the right candidates that sort of thing so out of all the candidates that you get give us if none of those are acceptable V to us you will do the search again won't cost us anything that's correct okay thank you again for your presentation vice mayor yep I have one uh hi I'm I'm remote tonight I have one question one clarification and one comment uh I'll do the comment first you might want to recommend to candidates who are trying to learn more about biscane Park that they watch all of uh not all of our watch some meeting videos that are all story on YouTube uh that way they not only get to see who the players are in the village they get to hear residents speaking enduring public comment edit workshops all of our board meetings are also recorded and not all of them many of them are recorded and stored on YouTube as well so it's a great way for them to understand sort of the DNA of the village uh while they're in the process and it might scare some people away quite frankly if I can comment on that too you're you're absolutely right and really the the best candidates will have done that research you will notice the final three whoever come in they will have read all your board meetings they will know that the issues are going on here they'll know a lot of things obviously we will Ste your candidates in that direction we have you provide us with any materials that we can give to the candidates uh whe it's benefits if it's uh you know here's our financial information anything that's public or any tidbits here's our brochure we provide that to the candidates we do direct to them but uh vice mayor I I I firmly believe in what you're saying but a really good candidate will have done that research and you guys will see that and that's what provide to you what one would hope we've had some people who we thought were really good candidates who did do that and turned out they while they may have been a good candidate they were not a good hire um the clar the uh clarification regarding the one-year guarantee so at any point during the first year that this person doesn't work out you go find a replacement for us should they be yes yes uh I not sure it doesn't matter why they it doesn't matter if they're terminated if they don't make it through the probation period if they resigned does it matter why they left I I believe I believe in the contract the only thing is is if should there be death uh it's pretty morbid but no that it does not it's for any reason okay very good um and what is the highest level of Municipal executive that your company has placed that list was up there kind of quickly and I was reading it sounded like you're specific to an industry you have a special specialty area which I understand but you do Municipal work as well it sounds like you've hired people at the highest levels in airports what's the highest level you've hired for a municipality that is that is a great question great observation I I don't hide the fact that we've not done a city manager or or Village manager uh position we do have a lot of work with cities counties uh like I said the CFO of North Miami Beach a director of HR people that are one one level below the top position whether it's a mayor City Commissioner uh those would be the top I know some of my competitior competing firms here uh did my research on them and I'm sure they're great as well they they probably have uh some of them do have more under their belt probably in terms of title uh but our our our success is tied to our process uh you know we we've done searches plenty of searches this year of uh titles that we've never done before and really it's it's like I said we're we're it'd be sure we can have a Rolodex of 20 C manager people that applied but then we're just recycling the same candids that didn't work out for another search and I don't know if those are the top quality candidates like those top quality ones will be the ones that we reach out to hopefully that that aren't looking that are specific to what you are looking for so the long the the short answer is the highest title CFO Director of Human Resources uh probably is is is where we would go with that okay uh for you know Departments of Aviation we put in CEOs airport directors board director anything uh above that so it's not that we haven't done but you have private sector experience and public sector experience correct we've recently uh part of what I was brought in to do was increase of Revenue uh I've been here over six years and we've since expanded into the private sector where we had zero uh revenue and now it's it's getting close to about 50% of our Revenue comes from the private sector I thought you said you started in private sector in the airport no we started in the public sector uh in the airport world just just city and county airports I see at the city and county level okay those are my questions and comments thank you thanks vice mayor BL thanks so much for the time we very much appreciate it we're going to switch to our next firm and if you want to hang around we we uh we have absolutely you get to watch everybody else thank you for having me appreciate it you so we're going to queue up our next group um uh I'm gonna call it cbna because I don't want to mispronounce the last name maybe you can help me I I'd be happy to it is a little bit tricky you don't pronounce the a it's Colin beniger and Associates and I'm not managing partner I have with me Scott Crim uh we've been in the business oh first of all let me just say we're thrilled to be here uh we've done a lot of work in Miami Dade County uh for City and County man well city manager has never done a County Manager in Li date um we worked uh for uh B Harbor Islands ball Harbor North Miami Surfside actually uh probably we have the longest serving manager in Surf Side in the last 20 years um they tend to turn them over fairly regularly and gear moam Dio lasted five years before he resigned not under pressure um right now we're doing six city manager searches through in Florida Fort Walton Beach uh Juno Beach which is actually a very similarly size uh city or town to uh this Kane Park it's about 4,000 people Palm Beach County and we're also doing the city of Sarasota they have three out of state all of our work frankly is gotten by word of mouth and references and proposals um farthest away right now is no alas of all places not quite sure how Florida company got a search in Gnome but I think it had to do with our process and our reputation um we've been in the business for 27 years I started the business from scratch and felt that I could do a better job than most of the people I was well I was a city manager candidate in those days and I just thought I could do a better job of finding people I was always great at uh finding uh people for the the right person for the job whether it was my Public Works director or or U my second basement on my softball team so I got into the business I thought that if I provided a very high quality product uh focused on Communications customer satisfaction and did so at a reasonable price I'd be successful and 20 seven years later almost in March it'll be 27 we're still in business and uh actually started as a Florida based firm and we've now worked in 20 know 35 States we have a process that seems to work anywhere we use it it works well with any kind any candidates the our claim to fame probably as much as anything else is that we'll tell you what we're going to do and then we do it we're to completely reliable uh we do not believe in unforeseen circumstances uh we're the experts you should be we should know what we're doing so we quote a firm fixed fee uh and we have no ever asked for more money than the fee that we've been uh that we've quoted probably been entitled to it once or twice but I'd rather be able to make that comment you can you can take that fee to the bank we've never missed a project deadline major project deadline on our on one of our searches so at the beginning of the search we will uh agree to a schedule with you and as long as you don't want to move something those dates will be hit um what I would say is in terms of what sets us apart as our searches are Problem free we've been doing city manager searches now for 27 years as I said we do about two-thirds of the searches in the State of Florida uh where a city or county retains a search firm to um help them hire their city or county manager think it's 145 of the last 223 um we have an extraordinary ability to find the right candidate a couple of our placements uh one went on to be the uh basically the county manager in Fairfax County we hired him in James City County and another was TC Broadneck and he was helped him uh get the job in tacona Tacoma identified him and got helped him get it and he went on to be the manager in Dallas for eight years and now he's the manager uh Austin in Texas our search is TurnKey we understand you're a small City your staff is limited um we are not going to be a burden basically we'll do all the work we'll need a little bit of help coordinating interviews and you know hotel reservations when it when the time comes I think the the thing that really sets us apart is relationships we've been in business in Florida long enough that pretty much everybody knows us and we know most of the people I'm not going to say I know everybody but you know the question came up about references and we know a heck of a lot of people in Florida to ask um beyond what the candidate gives us our basic process is similar to what you've just heard uh we're going to start we want to sit down with you we want to interview you we want to get a chance to know you we want to watch some of your meetings uh we want to be able to um develop a brochure that's going to be positive but accurate you don't want somebody thinking they're coming to Disneyland and uh realize that or Disney World I guess in Florida uh and then realize that uh it's not that we want to tell them our our bro the goal on our brochure is to include all the information that a candidate might want to have in order to make a decision on whether or not this job is for them so our brochures tend to be oh about a dozen pages long 10 to 12 pages long there's a few pictures and a few charts in them and you you have copies of one of them I believe in your package in our appendices so you can see what we put together um some people think they're a little lengthy but quite frankly if the candidate doesn't uh isn't interested in the history of uh missc Park they can skip that section if they already know about the weather they can skip that section too but they will have the information they need to make a at least a preliminary judgment on whether or not this is the right place to be part of the key of our interviews is getting really to know you as as individuals the best candidates are going to want to know who you are and what's important to you what makes you tick and quite frankly do you play nice in the sandbox um we'll be asked so we need to know once we uh put the brochure together and it normally takes a couple of weeks um we will go back and forth with you a couple of times to make sure that you're happy with it that we haven't missed something it'll be based primarily on our interviews with the elected officials and any stakeholders you'd like us to talk to um once we have that brochure we'll put it out on the marketplace and we will well we use really uh four different approaches to um find our candidates one is Outreach I mean we are an executive recruiting firm that's what we're we call ourselves and that's what we do do uh we do do advertising about 20 25% of our candidates come through that we do um an email Outreach now we don't have 60 or 100,000 people in our database but frankly there's only about 4,000 city managers or cities in the country that have a city manager form of government that are over 2500 in population we think we with our 14,000 names we think we've got pretty much all the city managers that we um in the country of cities of any size and the you know assistants and others that are interested in uh city manager of positions they we have our database from prior searches that we look at uh our email we we love our email list quite frankly because people can forward it to somebody else if they if they're not interested in the position and we often get uh people that way we you know we can reach out to lots and lots of people but we're never going to reach out to everybody in the country that might be interested in the position what we depend on is this process kind of creating a buzz in the industry it helps that we're so well known in Florida to start with but it kind of creates a buzz in the industry and we want people talking about it among themselves Florida managers Managers from other places that will help us reach the candidates who looking for once we've uh we normally advertise for 3 weeks and then we'll take a look at the candidates we have and if we're not satisfied we'll extend it for another two weeks now that doesn't impact the schedule we'll agree to a schedule at the beginning and if we need to extend it we'll just work a little harder on the background checks we normally uh the process once we've um actually closed the position I will go through the resumés my partner Scott here will go through the resumés we'll identify somewhere between eight and well probably 10 and 15 candidates that we think are strong we'll call them up and then we'll put them through our test or an interview I call it the Colin test I'm sure Scott calls it the Scott test and it's about eight questions that obviously lead to other questions but but there are questions we've honed over the years that let us know if that candidate's really a good fit and if they're really a good manager anybody can pay for a professional refer uh resume writer so we want to talk to them in person and we have a set of questions that work extremely well for us once they pass that we put them through our background check process and that includes well first of all we have them answer about 16 questions we tell them to be brief to the the point we want to know that they can write we want to know that they can prioritize so we tell them that you have about five maybe six pages to answer those questions so just hit the high points we asked we put check their criminal history at the state county and federal level we check their civil records history at the county and federal level we check uh frankly their driving record once in a while you'll see somebody has a heavy foot and that that can tell you something um let's see we verify education and employment those are the main things oh we check their financial history as well uh bankruptcies and credit and you know those is those can be a little tricky to deal with but if you see somebody who really can't seem to manage the their own money it makes you concerned about whether they can manage yours uh as I said that can be a little tricky with with the laws these days but it does tell you something and and we know how to work with it um let's see the next step is references now we look at references a little differently from what you've just heard we give each candidate a list of people that we want to talk to in other words I don't want to talk to their five best friends uh I'd like to talk to all of their current city council members I'd like to talk to some past City council members I'd like to talk to the City attorney the external auditor some Community activists um let's see I'm sure though the Personnel director some peers some subordinates our goal is to interview and we do it in person we don't send them a piece of paper uh you can learn things when you actually get them on the phone um and our goal is to talk to 8 to 10 people we know we're not going to reach everybody but that's why we try to start with about 20 names we also know that confidentiality can be an issue so we you know we'll work with a candidate uh to uh pin down the exactly the people we're going to talk to but we think references are very important and sometimes we'll see candidates drop out once they see our list again we're not going to if it's a really good candidate we're going to work with the carefully about their references but we think they're important uh we do do internet checks and we do do social media checks uh and we do all that up front trying to think if there's anything else we do Scott if you if you need to jump in let me know I was just gonna comment Colin we we check very thoroughly uh news media uh we want to make sure that if that these candidates don't have any skeletons in their closet frankly if there is anything uh of concern we just won't move them forward you're the bottom line is our goal is to make sure we've got good solid clean candidates that are a good fit with you and there won't be any issues there won't be any surprises once we've done that then we're going to move into the interview process we have a pretty standard practice or po procedure we like to follow we were flexible of course if you want to do something differently we'll we'll we'll work with you on it but we like the candidates to be seen by the public in a public reception we' like to see like you to see them in a social setting because they will be representing you in your government uh in at Rotary or whatever citizens groups we like to do one-on-one interviews with the city council members because quite frankly or Village Council um frankly Commissioners excuse me not council members um what ultimately determines a city manag Village manager success or failure is his or her chemistry with with the elected officials and with the public to a lesser degree that's important and the way you can judge that is with their the chemistry and that's what you determine in the one-on-one interviews and we like to have the candidates uh come before the commission as a whole and have you fire questions at them so when you're done you will have seen them in a social setting you will have seen them one-on-one and you will have seen them in a somewhat like a council meeting commission meeting and those are the three settings you're going to be working with the most closely we do like them to spend some time with staff as well and you can get input from the staff too once that's done we have a very straightforward procedure for selecting your next uh Village manager and um in normally is done in about 15 minutes and then we'll work with you on the contract and come to make sure that we come to an agreement uh or that the you and the candidate come to an agreement on a package that's acceptable and reasonable um that's kind of the process in a nutshell and I will tell you that uh we're excited to work with you again and that we will give you a 125% effort as opposed to the mere 110% effort that everybody else is promising so having said that if there's any questions thank you Mr beniger that was very helpful um and uh got as well Mr crem thank you um so I'm going to go ahead and open up to the commission at this time I do have um a couple of questions um start to hear a pattern um so one of the questions that I have for you is is um uh process uh in advertising the position and what kind of feedback and and guidance you provide uh to The Village on salary on benefits on uh qualifications you know how does how what does that process look like from from your group I am glad you asked that question because I neglected to mention some something one of the things we do every year in Florida is a salary and compensation or yeah salary and benefits survey for every town city county manager in the state um so we have data on approximately 300 cities 330 something like that uh what their managers are being paid and what their benefits are and so we can tell you exactly what your neighbors are being the manager and your neighbors are is being paid or uh similar cities and counties nearby um so we and we typically do a memo that recommends a salary range for you based on comparable cities now in terms of uh advertising we'll normally work with the fccma the the Florida City County management association the Florida League of cities we have kind of mixed feelings about icma the international City County management association only because we're so well known in Florida that it tends to be a situation where we're spending money that we don't need to spend we do do a follow-up survey on where candidates heard about the job and indication is that for at least for Florida searches most of the candidates have heard it from from us about it from us and uh so we don't do the international City County management association generally for Florida but those are the trade associations that we deal with okay who want us will no I I appreciate that um what about um uh are you able to and are you willing to I guess in these processes with your current and past clients share some of those clients success stories I guess kind of trials and tribulations if you will uh with respect to instate versus out ofate candidates because that's been something that we focus very uh very acutely on is is experience in Florida particularly experience in Miami day County um what are you able to during this process share with us um uh kind of your experience and your position on on that matter we ran a did an analysis of our placements a few years ago and one of the things we found that was if you looked at the placements after 5 years that really it didn't matter whether you were from instate or out of state the success rate was pretty much the same now having said that I think there's definitely benefit to having somebody from Miami dat County uh somebody from Florida ideally but we've had people that are quite successful from other places for example Bay Harbor Islands the manager there was Ron Watson uh Ron came down from New York he was there eight years before he went over to Aventura um so to me it's uh you know it's what you want uh what your preferences that's what we're going to go look for but we're not going to overlook great candidates from other states that might be a very good fit for you admittedly their learning curve will be a little higher but that's okay sure okay uh thanks just one final question for me before I I turn it over um what's your group's policy if we if we do not go with a candidate that you present to us I can give you an example of that uh very easily because I'm living through it right now our policy is that if you don't find the candidate you want we keep going and we'll go until we have to uh you know until you find the person want and it's again it's a firm fixed fee now the case that we I'm going to cite right now is a little frustrating to me but you know what it's part of the job and that's uh one of our clients recently had a council member resign so instead of having a five- member Council we had a four- member Council and when it came time to select the manager we presented two great candidates and they couldn't figure out between them which one they like the most two were on one side of the issue for one candidate and two were for the other candidate and it was like they wouldn't budge so the search failed in a sense I mean we had two great candidates they just couldn't come to a conclusion and I am convinced that if we had a fifth member we would have had a placement by now but we're doing the search over again now because that's part of our our policy okay understood well thank you so much for for the time I'm going to go ahead and open up to the commission I go first this time and I'll make it quick yeah go ahead um hi Colin I'm Matt Kennedy I'm remote tonight uh thanks for joining us so uh I just want to comment real quickly on something you said about getting people from out of state we have lots of conversations about that and we recently experienced uh uh a a manager that did not work out for us and he came from out of state and I don't think that was the only reason he didn't work out for us I know it wasn't the only reason he didn't work out for us I also know because my um my husband's brother is a professional Municipal manager he's been city manager in several states around the country that these folks uh tend to move around from area to area County to County state to state and if they have a skill set they have a skill set and one of those skills should be learning how things are done locally so I can certainly appreciate you saying that um I want to ask you one specific question two managers ago uh was Mario Diaz uh and I'm sure you know who Mario Diaz is he's now the chair of the someone get the title for me please I'm not going to get it right the D County Managers Association Managers Association yeah yeah yeah and uh so Mario was with us for I don't know two years or so and the reason I bring him up is number one he was successful for us and number two um and he went on to bigger and better things with our blessing and um we gave him his first title we gave him his first big title right so he had worked his way up yeah and we gave him his first city manager business card so for the first time he was able to say I'm the manager of a city now we're the smallest city in you know the world but he was still he was still the he was still the manager right uh and then he went on to he he boled on to bigger and better things good guy and he did a good job for us these Rising Stars we recognize that we're a place where they could make their Mark and do really good things for us and that we might find oursel in a succession of those kinds of people um and there are other people we would consider as well are there any specific ways that you recruit these Rising Stars other than putting ads out there and hoping that they see it when we hired Mar when we hired our last manager who did not work out for us our second choice was someone who works for the county in sort of an upper level position and he was our second choice and we didn't hire him and he he he saw the ad and he applied is there any way that you go find these people that have higher level positions but have never had the big title and are ready for it to go recruit them actively for us rather than hoping that they see the job po yeah yes we do we we BAS basically because of our experience in Florida we know a lot of those people and we'll call them frankly often times people will call me before I get a chance to call them because they know my name and reputation uh probably a great example of that was um John Lewis Jonathan Lewis who was in uh uh gosh trying to think if I've got the last name right I believe it is anyway Jonathan was in uh pal Bay as an assistant city manager Northport was looking for a city manager I called Jonathan up and said Jonathan this is something you might want to look at he did and you know he took the job he stayed about 8 years and then he went over to Sarasota County for a year or less than that uh as an assistant and within about three months they promoted him to the county manager in Sarasota County so I mean Brian Hill was an assistant in um small city in South Carolina went to James City County and then now as the uh CEO of Fairfax County County Virginia so back to the first example you gave Colin the gentleman that the first one you listed how did you know him you said you picked up the phone and or that he called you how did you guys know each other if you had never placed him in a position before through conferences uh Florida City County management association uh um Florida League of cities I also knew his boss frankly Lee felin was his boss he was the manager in um uh North Miami and we placed Lee in Palm Bay and when Lee got the job in Palm Bay hired Jonathan and uh so I got to know him through Lee and I knew he was a cap really capable young guy and so we I reached out to them okay so do you okay so you do have ways that you're proactively reaching out to people in addition to waiting for them to apply for the job that oh absolutely that's I tried to say that earlier I guess yeah so this whole this whole concept of hiring a rising star uh is very interesting to me because um uh we had great success with it once I'm not saying it's the only way there are people who have lots of experience uh who we'd be interested in as well but that worked for us once and it felt right at the time but we knew from the day we hired him I said we're not going to have you long please get a lot done for us because I know no I'm going to stay forever I'm like no you're not no you're not I know you're not but just get some stuff done for us why you're here and before you know it he was off so good for him God speak okay that's my only question thank you Colin and and thank you as well Scott all right well thank you so much for the presentation some of the questions were already answered I I wanted to touch base on something you included in the presentation regarding Community engagement there are some formats where you specify that could be done as part of the uh selection process is that within the fee that's been presented I'm sorry is that part of the fee that would that that was presented okay it's an all-inclusive fee that you're going to pay that fee you know there's exceptions where you might pay less but that's the that's the fee and whatever you really want to do within the the realm you feels going our goal is to give you the information you need to make a great selection and to give you the candidates you're that will give you a great selection and so if you want to involve the public we're happy to do that and we do it routinely if you don't some councils don't in that case we won't good and then my second question um who runs the interviews uh within your team would it be yourself and your expertise at what point uh do we have a point of contact specifically that walks us through and um the second part of the question is how do you interact with us to let us know that you need more feedback we need to change uh or discuss you know uh the search that were putting forward whether in its adjustments or not via meetings via telephone calls uh in terms of who's going to run the the interview process that's somebody from our firm it would be probably me or Scott um and we'll be there on site making sure things go as planned I mean Scott just got back from Seaside California running the we make sure that we have two project managers for every search that we do so you'll have two set of eyes from our firm reviewing these resumés these these candidates and you know making recommendations interviewing them and at the very least you can expect a weekly email from us letting you know where we are in the process and what we're doing and you'll have our cell phone numbers and so I tell people I'd like to take Sundays off but we're available uh 247 313 for sure and if you need us on Sunday it's 365 and the interviews themselves are done by you guys or the project managers um the initial search well one of us yeah one of us would be the project manager uh the other would be an assistant project manager we do our screening interviews you'll do the final interviews obviously got it all right that's it for me thank you thank you for being here U for joining us here tonight uh as commissioner amler said a lot of my questions have already been answered I think that's one of the problems of going towards the end is all the best questions have been asked already uh but one thing stood out me with your proposal and it's kind of an industry standard I see it in Mo Mo U majority of the proposals tonight you say you supply six to 10 outstanding candidates is there ever a time during the process where you'll Supply us the complete candidate list of complete applicants so we can see who the total number of applicants were who who applied and I know you can't Supply why they were excluded but just so we can get a sense of the the pulse of what we're getting as candidates is there a time we get the complete candidate list sure in fact uh we routinely provide that neglected to mention that but you know once a candidate applies for a job in Florida in a municipal government it's a public record so we don't have any problem providing a list in fact we generally provide a list with their most recent position on it so you know who they are and then if you want the resumés uh some of our clients do some of us don't but we generally send the list and the resumés to the client thank you thank you for clearing that up can I can I do a followup to your question so on that list that you provide do you also specify the reason why they were eliminated we generally do not uh I hate to put anything in writing about somebody that's negative but certainly if you have a question about why a particular candidate was eliminated we will be happy to answer it uh over the phone thank you and usually it's pretty straightforward I mean you know we we do get asked from time to time and the answer is usually as I said straightforward and we move on to the next candidate first off good evening I want to thank you for your coming and I I like the idea that you're doing six city managers now so I think that's very important uh you probably the commissioner has already asked these questions but I repeat it I apologize how long does your process take from the start to the to the end you know I don't think I said that but it's approximately 90 days it's usually three weeks to put the bro uh like a week or let's say two weeks to put the brochure together three weeks to advertise four weeks to do the background checks a week for you to have the materials in your hands to review it uh before we select candidates and then it's so 10 days to two weeks before you actually conduct the interviews so and will you be keeping us informed on a weekly basis on what how to process is breaking oh absolutely as Scott indicated it's a a weekly email during there's there's certain key points where we will absolutely reach out and talk to each one of you uh during the recruitment process normally the first week we get a few resumés the second week we get a few applicants the third week we get a lot and that's I think people procrastinate but it's also the public records it's a big decision moving to a new job but I think the public records act in Florida discourages people too so they wait till the last minute so we would probably we would send you an email at the end of the first week an email at the end of the second week and then we'd send you a uh we would call each of you and give you a a rundown on where we're at after three weeks and also Supply a memo summarizing the results of the recruitment if we're not happy at that point we'll extend the deadline I mean we're I'm a little greedy to be quite Frank I want to make sure you have an outstanding pool of candidates to choose from it if I've got five grade candidates at the end of three weeks it's not enough people drop out people get other jobs so I want a 10 outstanding candidates to start with and then we'll Whittle them down do do you stay with us I mean how long do you stay with us after we pick the candidate I mean do you help us in in case it doesn't work out in the future we have a one-year guarantee uh basically we ask for our expenses on only and that's usually you know a few thousand really it's not much compared to the total fee uh that's within the one year and then after that you know we will work with you we'd be happy to work with you again on another search and you know if it happened to be say 14 months after the the person was placed we would probably not charge the full fee we'd probably cut it back a little bit and so if if the candidates that you give us doesn't it doesn't work out so you'll give us um we do more of a search right let's say if you give us three candidates and it doesn't work out you're going to continue to search at no extra charge right right okay I think that's the most important thing to me is the references uh where the candidate has worked I know you can't violate confidentiality rule but do you have a process to read out what they have done in the past let say a city manager does something in in another city and they come to us follows the same process that they had before anyway that we can do a better job without violating any laws or anything well that's why we try to reach out to about eight at least eight I mean that's our minimum eight references per candidate and 10 to 12 possibly um we find that if we can talk to eight people that if there's something that's um a little screwy something that's wrong something the candidate's doing that's he or she shouldn't be or that it's a negative one of them will let us know and at that point you know we will depend we'll either get an explanation and if we're happy with it that's fine we might we might Advance them if we don't like what we see we'll drop them it's got indicated okay thank you that was very helpful thank you well gentlemen thank you for your time um we uh we got a few more uh groups to get through so and then after that we'll be having a discussion so um I'm going to go ahead and uh again thank you for your time and and move on to our next group well thank you I appreciate the opportunity and we really do want to work with you so thank you thanks very much you okay so uh next up uh I have uh the the Mercer group go now you're live thank you good evening honorable mayor Commissioners thank you for having me here this evening thank you for having me this evening um it's wonderful to be back in South Florida again I drove down from Daytona Beach this afternoon my goodness it's beautiful here this is Old Florida just beautiful what sets Mercer group Florida apart from anyone else this evening we only do Florida we only do city managers County managers um Chief Financial officers HR directors um we we don't go outside the state we know Florida we know South Florida we've conducted searches in paletto Bay most recently we were in Miami Springs we conducted searches for keyis Gan and now we hope to do bisame part we don't overload our contracts either um I have for people who work with me I will be your person of Conta I will be personally screening all of the applications that come for the village and you will hear directly from me you will also have my personal cell phone cell phone number from day one and you can reach me 247 as long as I have that 90 minutes every Sunday to bring me back to where I need to be then I'm I'm at your disposal throughout the process I prefer not to do more than two contracts at a time because I want to give you that personal attention whenever you need me whatever you need me for for this search I'm here for you I do not have a database I feel like a database is only good for 30 days anyone who's really searching for a position will have been hired within that 30-day time period I do know those that if it's the right position they would apply for it and I do reach out to those I know those that say Hey I really want to get back to South Florida again and I'll reach out to them personally and see if this game Park is what they're really looking for I don't want to waste your time I don't want to waste their time I'm not going to promise you that we'll get 60 to 80 applicants that's not realistic in the times we're in 40 35 to 40 resumés for a position and from that I will present 8 to 10 to you when I present those 8 to 10 candidates to you you will have all the information that I have about that candidate and the background work that I can legally do so without their permission so we will do a comprehensive internet search I don't do social media accounts those get pretty sticky sometimes and that's pretty much people's opinions I will send you newspaper articles where the candidate has been mentioned in the newspaper for one reason or another I will send you the link and a little summary of that article and you can choose to open that link and read the entire article yourself should we be honored to have the contract for biscan Park the first thing I'll do is sit down with each one of you I want to hear what your vision is for the village what are the residents vision for the village what are you looking for in your next Village management what educational requirements do you have for them what kind of background do you want them to have I want to meet with anyone that you want me to meet with to get a better feel for what this community needs if you would like me to meet with staff I would like to do that for you and hear what they have to say I want want to hear what do you feel are the opportunities and the challenges that face the village and then when looking for those candidates I'll ask them to address those issues as well so you'll have that information before the candidates come for an interview I'll develop recruiting materials I'll work with you you'll receive a a a draft of the recruitment brochure ours is typically four to five pages long we talk about the community we talk about the government we talk about the position the qualifications the salary the benefits we also informed them that we can only maintain confidentiality to the point of the sunshine and what the state re preliminary interviews are done by me via zoom and if they're nearby I will meet with them in person I'd like to have that face-to-face contact with the individuals I will like I said I will give you8 to 10 candidates who I feel are the top candidates that meet all of the qualifications that you have SE and from there I will ask you to choose your top three after reviewing all of the materials that I send you their resume their letter of interest their responses to the opportunities and challenges and the News links you can call me at any time with any questions that you may not want to ask publicly and I'm there for you we will do an indepth background check on your three to five finalists and in that is their driving record their criminal history their local State National Education verification employment verifications references and credit history if they have a sketchy credit history I'm not sure you want them running your budget you will receive a complete background work on each of the finalist candidates that's typically 12 to 14 pages of information we like to involve as many people from the Comm Community as possible we will schedule a town hall or a meet and greet a very informal um setting where residents can meet each of the candidates discuss their concerns one onone and then we'll have a town hall meeting where you can ask each candidate public questions and then you'll select your next J manager Village manager we'd like you to have oneon-one interviews with each of the candidates if your staff would like to meet if you would like your staff to meet with any of the candidates we would encourage that as well we want to find that right individual who fits who is a good bit or bisc not just can they do the job it's can they do the job and are they we don't want to come again in a year and replace the village man we want to do it right thank you for this opportunity and I really hope to partner with this game Park this well thank you very much um so commissioner Huntington you reminded me that I was kind of monopolizing the first time and I want to get everyone else an opportunity as the first questions so I'll start on the other end um I really like your Florida roots that that that really resonate with me that you you're a Florida based company um what how far your reaches have you gone like how far through the state have you gone are you mostly South Florida or have you gone to uh you know Panhandle just give me a sense of entire State okay um Mary Esther in the Panhandle and um all the way down the state Fort Meyers I just completed a search for Lake Park um like I said earlier I've conducted searches for paletto Bay um Miami Springs locally helale Beach and you you mentioned that you uh you don't want to come back in a Year what's your uh typical um failure rate what how often does that happen where you have to come back and reinstall a new manager well like an astronaut once said failure is not an option we typically see that city managers run three to four years and it's unfortunately it tends to be with the election cycle uh the city manager is not always the most popular because he has to tell you not only what you need to hear not just what you want to he so that that makes them thank you so much um how much of our information do you put forward to the candidates we have recently finished a strategic planning yeah for the first time ever in the village so there is a lot already there that can be shared um how do you push that forward to the candidates to know more about ourselves I feel one one of the challenges we have is that we are very particular uh we're very small we don't have commercials there's no development at the end of the day the revenue streams are very limited um so that U combined with a very short staff due to our budget makes us very particular and and the ways in which we operate and the history all of it I think it's important for uh context for whoever wants to think about joining in how do you kind of go through pushing this out there in order to attract the right position for the village like all the other firms here this evening we're all going to do the same thing what you need to decide is who you best want to work with and who you can but I do advertise with the Florida leag of city the city and county Managers Association I do advertise on LinkedIn and I do advertise on icma and there's a couple other places um like gov HR they have a website that I I put I advertisements on as well and I'm going to reach out that I to people that I do know that want to be in or who are currently in this area and want to move to another location and I think I had a similar question to uh commissioner hington when it comes to that success rate the other challenge has been to have consistency long term so um if in your experience the positions that you feel you said usually they go around 3 to five years is that is that okay so major would you say majority of the percentage you've held like how do you how do you measure success beyond the one year is it that they stay longer is it that it I'm assuming that's what it is right Beyond Comm Beyond changing commissions that it stays and and the position still filled we measure successes that we keep in touch with those cities and Villages that we've been in contact with yeah and I'll reach out to the mayor to the Commissioners and say how are things you know once we complete the search and we place the candidate that's not the last you'll hear from and you'll always have my phone number that you can call or you can text wonderful thank you that's it for now thanks thank you for coming first off what the Commissioners ask good questions sometimes I like to go last because I don't like to repeat the same questions that they have um the references that's very important to me in the sense on how a city manager does at a previous even if it's just not a city manager his previous employment I don't want us to get the same mistakes as we get here how do you do that without violating any laws when when I'm looking at a candidate a possible candidate for the village I'm going to do an internet research first and I want to see why they left left their last position and then I can make phone calls as well anybody can Google Dr Google is a wonderful thing it's good and it's bad but we can get a lot of information from Dr Google we can watch previous Council meetings commission meetings where the candidate has been previously newspaper articles when someone resigns when they retire and we can call those places as well and again your process is what 90 days from the beginning and will you keep us informed weekly absolutely and these Town Hall meetings that you're talking about that comes that's included in the fee right that's not the town hold meetings that you were talking about that's included in the fee that we give them we're not going to have to pay something extra to do that right the town hall would be similar to this where um your residents can come and ask questions um that is an additional expense that sometimes cities will provide cookies and car no okay um okay thank you very much I thank you answer my questions vice mayor I think I've all said thank you very much for the presentation uh so I have a quick question for you uh I know you kind of uh started off the presentation by by explaining that the merer group you know Florida you're in Florida it's kind of the bread and butter so to speak um can you talk a little bit about how you handle out of state out of state uh candidates as well though so if we I mean of course we're at Florida City we're a date City or Village um but if we want to look at out ofate uh candidates you know what your group's experience is without aate candidates too you will set the minimum qualifications and from the applicants I will review those minimum qualifications that you set forth and if someone from out of state meets those qualifications and any other qualifications that you set I'm most certainly going to set up an interview with them to see what they know and one of the questions that I ask every every single individual that I interview is what did you do to prepare for this meeting with me today tell me what you know about bis G Park have you watched their commission meetings have you read any of the minutes to their meetings tell me what you know okay um and how about uh do you find that you you uh your group is is kind of fallen into these scenarios I you talk about um you know getting about 30 to 40 resumes presenting 8 to 10 candidates um how how do you handle what if there aren't that many what if you only get two you know do you kind of continue to the search or do you just bring the two and say this is what we got so take a take a selection if I get to at the end of 30 days I'm going to be the M shocked but then I'm going to going to reach out to you I will let you know along the way how many we resumés that we receive and by the end of the third week if we don't have a really good selection I'm going to be honest with you from day one if I don't have any candidates that I feel are a good fit that it will be wasting your time I'm going to tell you that I think we need to extend the search let's try it for another two weeks okay well thanks so much for your time thank you for being here and and for your presentation we very much appreciate it so we got a couple other groups and then we're going to as I mentioned we're going to hold a discussion so let's uh keep the ball rolling and um let me pull up my agenda and find out who we have next on our list sgr oh sgr we have next and that's going to be Miss dor Cruz yes hello thank you so much for having us here tonight we're really honored to be considered for this search and I want to let you know that Lynn Barbosa is also here with me Lynn has a background in Recruitment and works full-time as well with sgr and then some of you may already know Doug Thomas who's former city manager in Lakeland and still based in Florida he's the Executive Vice President of recruitment for sgr he wanted to be here in person tonight but he's actually with the city of Miami Beach tonight so was unable to be in two places at once although wouldn't that be nice if be could so I think Lynn are you going to share the presentation on your end yes can you see it no you cannot you asked to share there you go we got something there did we go we got it excellent so we're gonna go through fairly quickly um touch some key points and then um that way we all have time to ask Q&A we don't want to we don't want to waste your time um with duplicative information or things you may have already gathered I think you received a proposal from us as well and that'll have a lot of the information more detail in that so um let's see Lyn you want to go ahead and go to the next slide yes I needed to when you stood up little bit of background about sgr and I'm not going to read this slide to you because my assumption is that all of you can read yourselves but um what I will say is that one of the things that really stands out in regard to sgr is that we're we're one of the biggest recruit largest recruitment firms local government recruitment firms in the nation um but we also do a lot of other things with local governments such as leadership development interim services and Consulting um strategic foresight and we're also partnered with the alliance for Innovation so um that helps expand our reach and network but it also helps us with our candidate sourcing and helps our recruiters um with networking and being able to provide that full service to our clients so our mission is to help Lo local governments become more successful by recruiting assessing and developing Innovative collaborative authentic leaders which is kind of a mouthful um but it it's the acrostic radical um and we like to we really like to help governments at the end of the day we we consider ourselves a partner and supportive for local government organizations and so that's what we exist to do all right so can everyone hear me yes we can perfect thank you so much all right good evening my name's ly Barbosa uh Chrissa introduced me I um have over 30 years myself and local government 27 years with the city of Las Vegas and Nevada uh the last five managing their talent acquisition division um and then I've been with sgr since I retired from the city of Las Vegas for six years um I've done leadership development and training and executive search for the last six years um for cities and counties Nationwide and I am based in Long Beach but we have recruiters throughout the United States including Doug um Doug is uh and Chris mention Doug he is our primary recruiter in the state of Florida but we also have two other recruiters and I'll get to um the primary person who would be managing this project for you all in the next slide but Doug has worked for us um he has a long history of senior leadership positions in local government he has his MPA as you can see so you know very very much um accredited and um not only on the education side but also just hands-on experience as a city manager uh he's last nine years uh been an executive recruiter with sgr and as Christen mentioned he's with the city of Miami Beach this evening um and he's doing their strategic planning workshop so has an extensive network in Florida as I know a lot of the other firms uh that presented tonight do Kevin uh canson would be the lead for this uh search he has 30 years in Municipal management um I know you all received this information advance so I won't read through this but he's an extensive career in local government and Senior leadership positions um as well as U master's degree and um professional associations Nationwide as well as in the State of Florida so um I won't go over everything um that is much like what you've heard I would agree um with some of our very capable competitors um that mentioned this is a similar process right for you know finding out um a little bit about a lot of candidates at the beginning of the search so we call that the funnel where you have um a large candidate pool and you're finding out about their minimum requirements as far as education and experience and with each Progressive step you're finding out more about them um not just what they've accomplished but how they go about their work um so we start out with a comprehensive understanding of um of the organization and um Doug having a really good feel for the landscape within Florida local government organizations um and working extensively in Miami Dade but also Broward County and elsewhere um will develop a specific set of questions um to ask the stakeholders that you identify at the beginning the process and and the key to that being you know that well-rounded understanding that we need to have in order not only to evaluate candidates but also to um really be an extension um of the village and be able to answer questions from candidates um I think one of the things that sets us apart as a search firm is that we really design a process that's two-way um and we'll go over some of the other differentiators but in today's labor market it can't just be a one-way process uh where we are asking all the questions as the hiring Authority uh but not devoting equal time to allowing the candidate to find out about the organization and I know some things were mentioned about um you know the responsibility of the candidate to watch prior commission meetings and certainly that's part of it but it's also uh facilitating those engagement sessions so they have an opportunity to interact not only with you as commission members but members of the leadership team members of the community and uh feel comfortable about this opportunity as um a fit for them as far as a Next Step career-wise um we do have a dynamic State of-the-art talting Talent marketing uh package so we do have an extensive network and I we have a slide we'll go over those numbers quickly but um this third bullet here the candidate vetting ensures in-depth understanding of the position in organization um when we get to this stage with our candidates we're doing a full stage one and stage two media and just real quickly what that means is you've heard some um of the other search firms mention the online check we do that but we also um have a very comprehensive process whereby we find all uh media coverage so this is where you'll reveal any potential um areas that we'd want to ask more questions around maybe the circumstances surrounding a separation from a prior agency um so it's not necessarily um a a disqualifier as much as it is a piece of information from which we'll develop questions so that you can find out a little bit more um from those candidates um candidate understanding of the organization I mentioned that so that's really important we spend a lot of time getting to know um everything about Village operations the community what the challenges are so so that we can uh be fully transparent with our candidates and prospective candidates um much like uh the other firms we have a 12-month placement guarantee so if for any reason you're not um satisfied with the results we will redo the search for no additional cost um it's only hard cost pass through for advertising and travel um this is um the sections of the position profile brochure social media marketing um this really is um so much of what sgr brings to the table um as a nationwide firm that has been in existence uh since 1999 um we've built up our Network um we are in weekly communication with local government leaders Nationwide through our 10 and 10 um that's a database of approximately 40,000 subscribers um so we post our opportunities not only uh within the Weekly Newsletter that goes out but we also have a job alert system that targets those who have um expressed an interest previously in City management positions in this case we have them for all of the different operational areas of cities uh villages and counties typical source of semi-finalists again uh just emphasizing much of what differentiates us is uh because uh we have been um an established public sector search firm since 1999 um we have that really robust Network so 65% of our placements um come from direct Outreach whether it's the Weekly Newsletter social media um and then you can see the portions the remaining percentages uh come from National trade advertisements professional websites I know some of the other search firms mention that State trade advertisements and then other personal and other um referral sources so what's really important to understand here is that we um from having that um experience casting a wide net we really know which ad sites um are worthwhile um and this is all in addition to passive candidate sourcing and that's um of course reaching out um on behalf of this opportunity and and um initiating those conversations with strong prospects um this is all in the proposal so I won't go over all this I'll be happy to answer any questions but I don't want to get too much in the weeds I want to be very respectful of your time um but this is much like what I went over in one of the initial slides as far as the timing um from the date that the position profile is approved uh by The Village it's 90 days um to the time on site and uh conducting finalist interviews um we have that strong National recruitment that's our footprint in us um so over 450 local government recruitment clients in 37 States um the other part of this slide is um really really important uh for Florida searches this is the presence that um we have in Florida in the professional associations um and I won't read all these bullets for you but just suffice to say that Doug uh Thomas um is is really integrated into uh the local government uh professional association scene there in Florida in a number of different ways so this allows him to do that passive candidate sourcing this allows him that um consistent and continuous communication with people who might be interested in different opport opportunities within the State of Florida and um it results in a higher quantity and quality of candidate pools um these are recent city manager type recruitments we've done Nationwide again this is all part of The Proposal so I won't um go into too much detail other recent Florida recruitments um you can see we've done recruitments all over the site all over the state and um all different executive positions so from director of Public Works to um obviously city manager Town manager Village manager um Finance positions all operational areas excellent thanks Lynn um and I think one of the things I really want to touch on because that we have a slide in there that's called the importance of social media marketing I think and I meant to change that to digital marketing because we're utilizing various tools they're not all social media but um we do have um almost 20,000 followers on LinkedIn that actively engage with our content um so that is going to help us reach those active and passive candidates or potential candidates um we Glen mentioned our email subscribers but we also have um over 500 City management professionals who have subscribed to receive our job notices so they are they are sub subcribe to receive all of those as we as we set them out um so I think those are kind of some of the key points um if you have any questions about some of this data please feel free to ask but I'm trying to honor your time and I know it's a lot lot of words so we can go ahead and go to the next one L okay yes um so again I've woven this into both Chris and I into um the other slides um this is um a survey that was conducted by gr um about um you know just us initiating a survey to find out how we rank against um competitors and um we're happy with those results um all right questions thoughts anything you'd like to um get a little bit more in detail with fast so I apologize but felt like maybe that that would give you all more time to ask questions and focus a little yeah certainly no thanks very much for the the presentation in in providing us the opportunity um so again I'm going to work backwards so we can mix it up a little bit um anyone want to get us started I'll just ask uh I don't have many questions I just wanted to understand so your expertise would you say I saw in one of the slides that you you said you have 40,000 um database and about 1,500 of that was in Florida is that correct yes ma'am yeah okay so it would you say uh how much is this your area of expertise both Florida and government and and recruiting specifically for this position no The Village manager city manager position is the number one position that we recruit for um speaking to Florida specifically and Lynn you jump in here too so I apologize I just just jumped in on this one but um Florida is actually our second largest state as far as number of clients that we work with um so Texas being our first and then Florida is our second so um we are very active in Florida recruitments and have a large Network there I hope that answers your question Lyn do you want to add anything yeah and then and and when you talk about recruit recruiters so um we would have two people in on top of this account if I'm if I underst you correctly so basically Kevin would be your primary point of contact on this recruitment would be playing a support role for Kevin they've actually they're they're a great team kind of a dynamic duo um they' done they've done a few searches together already and um so Doug would be there to support Doug has more experience with sgr specifically and so he would be providing support to Kevin but Kevin would be your primary point of contact and when it comes to his experience is it also the um most experience within government and Florida yes ma'am yes uh are you scrolling back okay thanks Lynn for memory but you know that's never a good idea so you can kind of see some of um some of Kevin's experience which is pretty extensive but all in the local government mostly in the local government realm thank you so much so I want to echo on commissioner amsler's questions a little bit when you talk about your uh where the second largest um uh second largest area you work in is Florida I'm just looking over your recruitments between 2019 and current and I don't see a lot of Florida city managers that you've placed can you just talk about what recruitment specifically do you do you work in Florida if it's not city managers sure well we um so really any position in Florida so I mean not not any position in Florida sorry any local government position for the most part um we're able to tackle I don't want to make that blanket statement in case you know somebody sees this or follows back up and calls me out on that um but for the most part we can recruit for any local government position so um do they have oh good thank you ly you're so good um I was gonna try to remember off the top of my head but again uh so you can see here some of the positions that we've recruited for um I think and I had two to add and I didn't add them that we're doing right now um I think at least one of the I can look that up really fast but I think at least one of those is a city manager and I'm happy to go into more detail on that as well but we have done a number of city manager searches Nationwide um that is um the majority of the searches that we conduct in addition to Department director level searches uh for cities and counties Nationwide um but I think too what Doug has um accomplished in Florida is um working primarily with small to midsize cities uh similar in size to biscan park so um I think you know just we have the expertise on staff um Doug and Kevin included having done um searches for positions that directly report to a board and there are some others on here in addition to City County Manager um and they uh have the expertise of the entire team that's that's also um in addition to just the two of them that would work together um other recruiters that have done um a high volume of city manager recruitments we meet on a regular basis and assist each other sort of Leverage that um experience and those networks thank you so much for clearing that up for me he that's all I have can you uh go again how long do your hope process is u n 90 days right and uh 90 yeah and you'll be keeping us informed on a weekly basis yes um the recruiters do a weekly update and so that initial um process where we're doing the organizational inquiry and Analysis we call it that's where we're uh interviewing stakeholders that's typically a 2 to 4 week period um within which we're not only interviewing the stakeholders that you identify um to get that well-rounded picture of the community and the opportunity but we're also our Graphics team is producing the profile so that typically takes two to four weeks and then once you approve that it's 90 days um to the time that we're on site conducting finalist interviews and subsequently extending an offer okay and also uh can you explain a little bit more about your background checks and references the references part is very important to me and what they do in other cities before they came yeah absolutely so the background check is really similar to what you heard um the other search firms mention it's the criminal history it's the driving record um it's the education uh verification process it's definitely Financial history so um very in-depth um we review we go over any questions we may have with the candidate and then we um advise uh you all of anything that might have come up on a background the reference checks we do use a software platform called skill survey um we do ask for specific um current or former um professional reference um within within the candidates background so that so what we're asking them for is a certain number of subordinates a certain number of direct reports especially for a village manager in this case um we'll want to talk to um a certain number of elected officials um peers um and um any other managers if they worked um within an industry other than local government and I have heard the conversation about you know [Music] um that the importance of the reference checks and I and I couldn't agree more because what you're finding out up until that point is really what have they done right what have they accomplished that's similar and transferable over to biscane park and then the reference check and some of the other vetting steps that we complete they're about how that person goes about their work right so the media searches will show us you know what um type of coverage did they receive um in terms of community feedback and that'll be all included especially um in someone who's had a long and and and um career in in local government the professional reference check uh we start with the skill survey if there are questions once we issue and submit that report um to the Commissioners then um we discuss that as a group and if follow-up calls um um if we if you don't if you all decide um we need additional information we do those follow-up calls we um request additional reference information from the candidate and we make sure that you have the information at that point in the process to feel as comfortable as you can there is no 100% guarantee on anyone just because right you know we're all everybody's you know it's people hiring people um but as much and as thorough of a vetting process um that exists um I believe that that's certainly what we conduct here um within sgr mayor I'm good Vero and Ryan chased down my my followup questions Al righty um so I just have one one quick question for you and one kind of funny note I noticed that your group did the recruitment for the town manager for South Windsor Connecticut which is funny because that's the town that I grew up in and I don't often see that so that was interesting and that was Doug too was and it was Doug well yeah so it's it's you know Doug was kind of the next topic that I was going to jump to you know it's I know he's obviously busy tonight but it's sounds like Doug kind of is the the boots on the ground so to speak down here in Florida um because I I think one of the questions and I don't know if you'll be able to answer this on his behalf but how granular uh Doug can get with the local governments down here because I know uh the vice mayor made this app point to uh to ask one of our other candidates here this evening you know what about these you know the these these younger kind of upand cominging candidates um you know that may not have the managerial experience per se but you know could potentially serve that role you know they may not be on these websites they may not be subscribed to your LinkedIn you know they may be in a department in the county and you know some of the people that really know those those folks are just the people that have the real um the real long experience here in Miami de County so can you talk a little bit about that um how your group works you know within within Miami D County within South Florida I I absolutely can but what I think is also important is that a lot of the value we bring is we're a nationwide firm so I heard some discussion around instate experience we you know have I've done a number of Texas searches and that comes up often um it's certainly preferred but if you find a really strong up incomer um that has the capacity the potential um to scale their experience whether it's in a smaller um agency or at a department level in Florida or whether it's um from out of state I think a lot of what we help you do is evaluate that potential um and I and I heard um some discussion around um a prior Village manager named Mario that was a real success story he was only there two years that happens with a you know an upand Comer at a certain point in their career um but as long as we go into that as an organization understanding hey these are the things we need this person to get over the Finish Line um if they're here two to three years and get us down that road perfect um sometimes we work with uh organizations that want somebody who's a little more seasoned and tenured um maybe they're you know five to eight years out from retirement but they bring a wealth of information that depth and breadth of city and Village operational experience so it really depends on what you share with us during the um um exploratory process that that beginning stakeholder interview process that you tell us is most needed in bis King Park um Doug with nine years in executive Search just in Florida that's after his career in the midwest um has a lot of connections with local government um professionals at all levels uh at the manager level um not city manager but manager within an operational area of local government um up to city manager um and a lot of um the value too is the volume um we have a number of uh recruiters it's still a personalized process for all of our candidates and our clients but the volume comes into play when we're working with all these different agencies Nationwide and of course within the State of Florida and we know who those top contenders were in a recent search in a search we did two years ago um I can't tell how many times I'm calling up you know my number two my number three candidate for different director and city manager searches and asking hey would you consider this um and those really strong candidates are asking me a lot of questions too right about the organization the community the challenges um so he he is granular but we also as a nationwide search firm bring that volume um of top contenders um who competed at a really high level in other searches understood well thank you very much um if there's no further questions from the commission at this time um thank you again for being here with us and presenting uh we have one more and then we have a discussion to be held after that so thanks very much and uh we'll uh we'll hop on to the next the next candidate thank you thank you so much thank you so last but certainly not least uh our final group with us tonight is s Renee narlock and Associates and please correct me if I pronounce that wrong are you with us Renee I am here here we go hi there hi so the floor is yours thank you how's everyone doing tonight doing well thank you good good I think I might be the last one I'm not sure but uh I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight I want to thank um Bradley Weissman for helping to coordinate all of this he's been very helpful this week and while I did do a presentation I'm actually not going to go into that um I'm just going to share with you a little bit of information here and make sure that I answer your questions I know this is an arduous process for you and I think you've garnered a lot of information tonight so hopefully uh I can share with you a little bit about what we do and how we do it and um why we're a good pick um for you as a recruiter um I have been doing public sector recruitment for um many years now I'm gon to say 25 plus years I have staff that's been with me for quite a while and uh we focus primarily on public sector recruitment that means local governments City County Special Districts um I'll say Nationwide and I'll I'll clarify that a little bit uh as we go forward but I started out working for a company called David and Griffith and Associates way back in the day uh it was bought out by Maximus and then I did recruitment uh for both DMG and Maximus and then Maximus got out of the business and one of the VPS of recruitment went on his own Bob Murray and he started his own practice out in Sacramento and I went with Bob and basically he did his his his office on Sacramento did everything on the west coast uh basically the eight western states on the other side of the Rockies and I did everything this side of the Rockies and uh we worked in that capacity for a very long time I mention that because I do have experience on working on the west coast there were many searches that they were doing on the west coast that I was involved in but my territory was this side of the Rockies um Midwest Texas um certainly Florida and um and I did that with Bob for about eight years and then he retired he offered me the company and I said I'm G to just incorporate myself and so in 2014 that's exactly what I did I Incorporated my own firm uh I am a native of Florida uh I grew up in Pensacola moved to Tallahassee to go to school many years ago and just loved it in Tallahassee quality of life and nice folks and um that's it I know my way around Florida I certain cly have done a lot of work in Florida uh I don't plan on leaving Florida anytime soon and um that that said though I you know I've done plenty of work outside of the state as as have my colleagues excuse me I'm gonna apologize now for my throat I'm getting over something that I don't I don't know what's going around um a little bit about um that's a little bit about who we are uh a little bit about what we've done um I I don't know 500 plus searches probably in my career um again at the public sector level local government cities counties Special Districts large agencies small agencies um city of Dallas comes to mind daa Beach comes to mind all in between um different kinds of position a lot of city managers a lot of County managers a lot of Department director level positions Police Chief Fire Chiefs HR directors planning directors Economic Development directors I mean it's just a gamut of different kinds of positions some division maners managers really not any further down in the orc structure than that for the most part some nonprofits because a lot of folks like yourself serve on other boards nonprofits you love what we do for you and finding your village manager and when you need an executive director at the nonprofit you work for you come to me and say hey Renee can you help us here and the answer is yes so I don't know probably five maybe 10% of our portfolio over the years has been for nonprofits but we stay in our lane which is public sector recruitment we've been at this a long time probably many years before most of the companies that you talked with uh we've seen a lot of change over the years I love what I do I get to meet some of the brightest and the best um there are a lot of dedicated public servants who do great work I love how the job itself has changed over the years and how local government has changed over the years um so a little bit about how we have how we do what we do um we have a good process a very good process I think gets from point A to B um I tell my staff all the time you hire us to find you good people that's the ultimate goal here we can run a great process which we do uh and we need to but ultimately we need to produce and we need to produce good candidates for you I don't have to have 50 of them I have to have a good solid smaller number of folks for you to have choices about who you would like I don't want to bring you the same person five times over 10 times over carbon copy candidates I want some diversity of every kind I want them to have come at this different ways um be at various stages of their careers um you know have done private and public or maybe just private you know but they've got to prove some things to me um if they only had private experience and they're coming at this and that's fine you know that that's a possibility um but a lot of the things that we do are just really kind of intuitive right we've done this for so long we know good people when we see them we know how to find them which is super important and we do create a strategy on the front end of every search while our process is similar for each search the strategy is not we need to find the right person for right now for you and so we have to really look at that and and take time on the front end talk with you listen learn research to all the things that we need to do for that I what I call the ideal Target um I think it was maybe the vice mayor that mentioned that someone might be a good candidate but that doesn't make them a good hire and to that point those are the things we're looking at where is that good fit right what what is really going to work for the village for the next person that comes in um not only skill sets not only experience not only you know backgrounds and education and all that stuff but really who are they as a person why do they want to come there are they going to connect with the community with the organization you know are they are they going to want to live life there are they going to uh feel like they're being challenged professionally there because people want to grow quite frankly uh in their profession and so there's just so many different things that you have to look at um not only in trying to recruit candidates on the front end and make sure we have a good pool but then as we go through the selection process too we have to look at a lot of things um I I'll just tell you that I pretty much did not listen to too many the presentations tonight other than when it got to the question and answer session I chimed in to see what kinds of questions you were asking and um because that's important to me to know what your concerns are and what matters to you not only right now but as we go through the process and um and I I heard a lot of what you were saying and the concerns that that you were sharing the questions that you were asking um we have to make sure this is a good fit both ways right I know I work for you I'm going to bring you good candidates but the reality is if it doesn't work for the candidate too they're not going to stay they're not going to flourish they're not going to be a good fit it's not going to be good for anybody and so I think that's where we're kind of different than other firms it's my guess I don't really know I don't follow other firms in what they do I know that candidates we work would say that they really enjoy working with us um I know that they feel like they're well taken care of when they're our candidate we don't treat them like a number and we don't just you know go down and check off the list and that um we connect with people this is a people business and so we really um go the extra mile to to connect with people to let them know that we understand this is an important decision for them this is a career decision it might include a relocation it might include other members of the family that have to be root uprooted and move somewhere new um and it's got to work it's got to work both ways or it doesn't work at all um that's it some of our clients are I know Florida experience is important um some of our clients just in your area alone uh we placed Lea Feldman at Fort Lauderdale he was there eight years or so uh we did Miami Beach two times not because we didn't get it right the first time but the first guy was there 12 years and when he retired then we came in they asked us to come back and do the next one um we did daa Beach not long ago I believe if I'm not mistaken I think the manager there used to be with the Village um Small World um we have done Coral Springs at a time where they really needed someone to come in and kind of shake things loose for them they had increased taxes in a very very long time it's a very difficult conversation to have and they needed someone that could come in and have the conversation and so we were very successful um with that search we have done work for Miami date County recently but it's been primarily in the public Housing and Community Development Department they just got used to using us because again we bring good candidates so um so we've done quite a bit of work there Broward County we've done work there you know we've done we've done work all up and down the east coast of Florida the West Coast of Florida uh we recently did St Pete Beach city manager search that was a super great search we brought someone that everybody was looking at her at first going I don't know I don't know Renee I don't know and I just said can you just trust me on this they did they took a shot at her and she is there as doing a stellar job they made a very good hire there um I've done work all over the State of Florida um simol County I have a multi-year contract with them I will say this I guess as a testament to us our clients hire us again and again and again and many of them um hire us on multi-year contracts um so we have I don't know a contract with simol County right now that goes to 2027 I think um many years because we had a very good experience with them hiring both their County Administrator and their County attorney last year um and people people hire us again because of it um I think we probably included a letter of recommendation in our proposal so we normally do that we like to do that we have a lot of those letters of recommendation we don't overdo it um but I they're very consistent with talking about I I'm gonna say they talk about how much we care because we understand the difference that a good leader makes in an organization it has an impact it has an impact on how things move forward how things get done and it and we care because of the community members we think they deserve that um so um we we heard some of your folks speak at the beginning of the meeting I thought that was great I enjoyed their input I'm glad they were there um and we like to make sure that we um even through our recruitment process we work with you to incorporate any Community element that um you want you want us to include there and we have some recommendations that we can make on that um I won't go into too much detail on our recruitment process other than to tell you that it's very thorough um we develop a candidate profile that is information that people who are not looking for a job we'll see we will get it before them um they're not going to find this in an ad some people may see it in an ad but they're going to get something coming coming across their desk it's going to be very informative to the point they don't have a lot of time we make it easy for them to apply um we're we tell them what they need to know to what their appetite for this position we're very good at selling your organization and and highlighting the benefits of not only the job but of living uh in in the village you know why why would they want to do that we include all of that so they have a moment to look at it they can get everything they need and then that's what leads to us having further conversations with them we're very aggressive at doing Outreach we do not rely on ads uh we do not rely on our brochure Although our brochure brings us a lot of great candidates we're very aggressive at Outreach we have our methods of finding people in advance we know they're qualified we want to talk to them and find out what do they bring to the table in addition to that we've got all kinds of contacts in the industry and doing this a long time we always look for new Talent we always want I heard some people talk about the upand comers we always want a mix of those in the group uh and we have ways to to find those folks and we do um because um they just bring an energy level a lot of times that organizations need and again want to grow and and they want to take on challenges and there's some drive there that we're looking for um we're good at screening candidates we're good at doing preliminary interviews with candidates asking the right questions all the searches that need to be done of public records and what's in their background and you know what do we need to know about um ahead of time uh and we dig however deep we need to we make recommendations uh we do we set up final interviews so our job is to make sure that you have all the information you need to make a good decision about your next higher and uh we do background checks we do reference checks they're in-depth checks uh we we talk to people if if if they give us people and we don't see someone on there that we want to see we'll go back to them and say hey I need to talk to someone that worked with you at this place or this place um because we need we need to we need to have information that we can give to you so you again you can make a good decision we can help you do that we're in it uh through negotiations if you need our assistance with that um we're in it um as far as responding to people another thing I've had candidates tell me is they greatly appreciate our communication with them because we understand that these folks are sometimes sticking their neck out for a job right in Florida everything is public and you put your name out there and the whole world knows that you're considering this job and you can risk the job that you have by competing in Florida and that handicaps Us in Florida so I will tell you I like to do National searches I know you're interested in people who have Florida experience but there are people who have Florida experience that may be outside of the state right now they've gone somewhere for a few years maybe they went to Minneapolis maybe they went to Texas maybe they went to California and they done some great things and the timing is perfect for them to come back maybe they're originally from the area they grew up in Miami Dade County they went to school in Miami they're they're extended families in the area could be a a number of reasons but there needs to be a tie that again tethers them back to the area I don't want to miss out on them because I'm just looking in Florida right now I want to reach out everywhere the more people that know about this opportunity the more good candidates I'm going to have ultimately um we do keep people updated even when we're done we let people know thank you for your interest in this position The Village has made a decision and and we're we're very kind about that people don't get that anymore and they appreciate that um so that's kind of our recruitment process as far as why us you know our experience which I can go into more detail about our team I've got a solid team we know what we do we know our lane we're good at it we stay on it um there's we're not just just recruiting candidates for you we're running a search process it's got to be a good process it's got to be fair it's got to be objective we can't have anybody at the end say oh it wasn't done right I was treated poorly or whatever we've got to do it right we've got to keep it moving we can't stall and and then we've got to make sure that when it's all said and done we have a quality pool of candidates for you to talk to so our process is important in making that happen I can't stress this enough our reputation is very solid we are asked to speak at the icma conference do do sessions on Executive recruiting do session on Recruitment and Retention um the last two years I've been asked personally to do sessions at the Florida Association of counties conference a Statewide conference uh it's been very well attended by people people are struggling to find good people the local governments are HR directors are struggling to find good people and they want us to know they want us to help them do that I've been hired by a couple of um entities recently who have asked us to come in and look at processes and just tell them how can we do better how can we get better candidates and how can we keep them get them so our reputation is very solid in the industry a lot of candidates tell me that they like working with us as a recruiter I hear that all the time um and then our expertise uh we know the pitfalls we know how to keep things moving forward and um anticipate things ahead of time be sensitive to things uh throughout the process make sure that we cover all the bases so that from start to finish you have a good experience as a board the candidates have a good experience and then and then we we accomplish what our goal is which is to bring you a good solid pool of candidates so with that I'm going to take a breather here and answer any questions that you have he well uh Rene thanks so much for the presentation um I'm going to go ahead and open up to the commission and um start the question process I'll start I just have one quick question uh I see in your proposal you list uh three onsite slash uh video appearances is that standard with your with your proposals that you normally do video versus on-site or what how does that normally break down um to tell you the truth for a city manager or Village manager position my preference is to do on-site meetings I think it I think it's it's just a good way you know as I said it's all about relationships I think it's a good way um to sit down with each of you individually which is what I would like to do on at the onset is to sit down with you and and listen to you and I think just meeting you in person helps me to understand you better but also you get a sense of who I am you know I I've had people tell me Renee you do fine on video but you're so much more personable in person you know and I think that would give you a comfort level so basically it comes down to if we have a client who finds it difficult to get people um in meetings um then we will be open to doing a video meeting we don't have a problem with that people are more comfortable with that sometimes um some of our clients are like oh no let's do it via video that said we will do whatever your preference is but typically we like to do an in-person on-site visit second meeting is usually when we recommend candidates we sit down and we tell you okay this is this is what we've done this is who applied this is what we think this is what we recommend next steps are interviews so that's an on-site meeting to recommend candidates and then the third set of meetings is the actual interviews with candidates onsite and I will tell you that is a meeting that needs to be done in person I have to be there we have to be there for that meeting you're going to have questions about candidates you're gonna have questions about the process we cannot do that via video that is I I won't do that meeting via video if there's any way that I can get around it thank you so much for touching on that clarifying for me that's all I have just just want to thank you for coming I have no questions thank you for the presentation um I have one question so when you come back to us with a preliminary list of candidates what would we look at is that a a formal sort of um summary that you present per candidate what do you discuss and what do you provide us with what materials yes um I provide you with the materials that we have received from the candidates and then I give you a presentation of what each of these candidates brings to the table um what I found out about them why I think they deserve a further look and anything that has come up that I feel you need to know about and what I mean by that is in my preliminary interviews I ask candidates is there anything in your background whether it's true or not that might cause some pause or concern or might just warn further explanation on your part uh and then I list a whole Litany of things you know DUIs criminal convictions I mean it's a whole and I give those as examples just to start that conversation so anything that I learn at that point in time I will share with you you know we're in Florida everything's public it's out in the open it's open meetings you know I I don't want to put out there you know a lot of detailed information at that point but I make sure that you know either through my conversations with you prior to the meeting or at the meeting what you need to know about any hurdles or any concerns that a candidate may bring I would have vetted those out further already and have enough information to present to you about that particular thing if there is anything a lot of times there's not but I want to make sure again that you have all the information you need to know to move them on to the next step which would be an in-person interview with you add it and then uh the part I I see in your schedule uh week uh 10 screen resume is 1112 record interviews stop uh candidates would this be you yes okay thank you mayor oh me I'm sorry uh Renee thank you your presentation was very thorough I what I was hoping to ask you was about uh Outreach proactive Outreach to candidates rather than passive re responses and you you addressed it already so I'm good to go okay that that enables us to bring you a diverse pool of candidates as I mentioned I want I don't want them all to look the same I and I'm the one who I'm the one who spoke earlier to another candidate about the rising star so I was glad you mentioned that as well okay yeah sure so Rene I have a quick question for you here sure um uh so and and forgive me if you said this and maybe I just kind of missed it but we we've heard from some of the other groups about how they like to involve maybe proactively involve or involve at the recommendation of the commission um involv staff department heads and most importantly uh potentially residents and um very early on very earlier much earlier on in our meeting we talked a little bit about how residents have been involved in in this process in the past so is that something that your your group um does is that something you consider uh involving those those groups of folks in this process and or um presenting potential candidates to them meet and greets Town Halls things like that yes um I I love that that matters to you um because um you know the whoever the man Village manager is going to be is going to be connecting with the community and it's actually to the benefit of the candidates to be able to have a meet and greet and and get to meet folks that they're going to be working with a lot uh that are going to be at the meeting and and and this is an opportunity for them to see them upfront know know know what the what it looks like right really get a handle on the job um as far as uh resident input on the front end on the very front in I I want you I want to underscore that uh no matter who I talk with I understand it's it's this group here who is going to be doing the hiring so the conversations I have with you may be different with other folks I talk to for instance if you tell me on the front end I'm going to ask all of you who do you want me to talk to in addition to talking with each of you individually who do you want me to talk with uh a lot of times what I hear is we'd like you to talk with our department directors we'd like you to hear what they have to say now I understand they're not doing the hiring we're not going to put them in that position of waiting in on who should be their boss but they still have information and participation that is valuable in this process if you as a board are inclined to do that we may say okay we're going to come on site we're going to meet with each of you individually and then we'd like to have a group meeting a Q&A with your department directors because we want to see the bench we want to hear what they have to say we want to learn from them um and and that'll give us a sense of the right kind of person that will fit with this group right um and then um at that point we may say you know do you want us to talk with the community we can either be a available to hold a meeting where community members can come and weigh in we can um put a survey out for community members uh it can be an anonymous survey if they don't want to say who they are or maybe they do and that's fine but you know ask them questions what do you think is important in the next Village manager you what attributes do you think you know what does success look like for the next Village manager we can ask them some questions and get some feedback from them that's very good for us it's good for you it's good for the community um and quite frankly it's good for the candidates um so we can incorporate different things throughout the process even if it's nothing more than putting a link on your web page your front your village front web page of you know if you'd like to weigh in on what you think is important in a vill village manager click here and then again they get to fill in something that comes directly to us and we get some so there's different things that can be done to incorporate that and I to tell you the truth mayor sometimes our clients are like no we don't want to do that we don't want we don't want to do that others are like oh we have to do that that's who we are here and so I'm glad that that you're um considering that I think it's important wonderful well thanks so much um so if we don't have any other questions from the commission um n just thank you so much for your time and being here with us this evening and your and for your presentation um and we're going to go ahead and we're going to move on to our agenda discussion portion wonderful thank you mayor thank you commissioner it's very nice to meet all of you and if you have any other further questions let us know we look forward to the opportunity to work with you we do recognize this is a great opportunity for someone um there's enough challenges there to keep someone busy it's a great location and you know I I can tell from just my interaction with all of you tonight um you're a good group of folks to work with and this is just something that would be um uh you know candidates would be excited about it we would not have any problem um selling the the the position and and marketing the position but also I don't think we'd have any problem recruiting good candidates for you so thank you so much for your time it's very nice talking to you great thank you very much all right so let's turn back to our agenda very quickly um that was our last presentation um so we're going to move into our discussion portion right now and for anybody for everyone that is still with us thanks for staying with us um I just want to uh provide you kind of a quick disclaimer so to speak before we get into the discussion for anyone that's not intimately familiar with the Florida Sunshine laws um this is the first time that this group has been able to discuss the candidates to discuss anything that you provided to us discuss the questions this is the first time so if you're hearing something you say gee well they should have known that by now or they should have already resolved that by now or they should have made up their mind by now please understand this is the first time we've had the opportunity talk it's all got to be done in public so I just want let you all know um that's where we're coming from so uh we're kind of starting from scratch so having said that uh this is just a discussion format so we've heard a lot we we've read a lot we've consumed a lot um I think maybe the outside of anyone having just a direct recommendation on someone we should go with thought maybe we should kind of as a group identify what we think our priorities are um with respect to to a firm that's going to be potentially helping us in this search um and maybe that'll kind of guide our discussion but I guess first things first um if anyone is interested in in making a proposal as to which group they want to go with um I I would certainly be happy to to open the may I jump in there Jonathan because I think I'm gonna I I have just a couple of real quick things to say and I'm GNA be the least engaged this so first of all hi guys nice to see you virtually tonight uh FYI um Dan and I set a closing date on the house for next uh Thursday so I will be tendering my resignation here effective uh one day next week so this unless you call an emergency meeting this is the last time you're going to see my face on your screen um okay so real quickly I'm on team we don't need to hire a recruiting firm so I'm with Linda and art and probably lots of other people who are wondering why we're going to be spending a lot of money to do this uh so I'll just put that out there uh and I'm very certain you're going to move forward with the firm so uh I'll make a couple of comments about that first of all um the resident committees that we've done before I like you know I'm always looking for ways to involve residents in and things in the village um whoops I just lost my screen there you are so I would ask you to consider to do two things one is to put together a a vetting committee that would meet with these folks outside and make some if not recommendations to you uh share some thoughts with you and I think uh a a good uh group would be the board chairs or designes from each board the manager works very closely with the board the board works very closely with uh the commission and I think that that relationship might be different in biscane park than it is in some other cities because we we lean on them so much so I think the input of those people many of whom have lots of good experience uh would be very valuable to you so that would be the first recommendation I would make is to put that committee together um and ask for their feedback the other recommendation I would make is that when you bring people in for their inperson interviews that you organize an event not unlike the one that I organized when mayor cabba came to see us uh a few months ago or was that last year I can't even remember now um but uh there was an enormous turnout from the community and I would think that you would get people to turn out to meet the candidates before the meeting so I could see you duplicating you know just use that as a template and have uh uh some music and ures and whne and coffee out on the lawn outside the Log Cabin let people mingle and meet and greet good opportunity for you to talk to people as well uh and then a lot of those people will filter into the meeting where you interview these people I think that's one of the things that makes us so special is that not only are we willing to do those kind of um those those um uh those opportunities for residents to give us put but that we can pull it off because we're so small and literally literally everybody can walk the Caba event most people walked over for that and it was an enormous success and people to this day still thank me for that so those are the two things I would ask you to consider is a is a chair a board to give you some thoughts if not outright recommendations and also be very aggressive about our resident event so uh I'm on team don't need to do this but given that I I'm pretty certain that you're going to do this this uh knowing what I uh what I read from these organizations and um uh listening to them tonight I'll make two comments one is I don't think you can make a bad hire from the group so there's nothing no one here that I'd say run away from and if I had to if I had to pick one myself tonight I would uh go with benzinger for a number of reasons that I won't go into that's to say so M my getting feedback oh um so M thanks I I appreciate the uh the input and this actually what you said um kind of predicted almost what I was was going to recommend and the reason and so and this kind of is is why I I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion here that due to Sunshine this is the first time we've had the discussion because to let everyone on the process we we got all these um we got all these proposals you know and for the first time we were seeing the kind of the cost and what we were getting for it and tonight is the first time we had the opportunity to talk about it so if any of one of us uh made a decision uh before tonight that you know gee we don't know that we want to go with any of these firms we wouldn't we wouldn't have had an opportunity to talk we would even know that right EXA exactly so um I before you know and I don't want to co-opt any more time and get everybody else a chance but I I personally after I've been through everything I'm kind of leaning towards a little bit more what um what Mac is recommending that um uh that we go we kind of go through the process and establish a process process on our own um reason being look I I think that what each of these groups has brought to us tonight and my computer just restarted on me what each of these groups have brought to us here tonight is really invaluable um and I think it would be would be incredibly helpful um I spoke with uh some of the um some of the referrals from Miami D County some that have worked uh with some of the groups um and heard nothing but good things so kind of calling those references and talking with them um but just seeing how much we're going to spend my my my one big question is going to is is always going to be where's that money going to come from um and I personally can think of three to four candidates uh without needing to go to a recruiting group that are potentially likely interested um and could do the job so that's kind of where I'm coming from um and that's one of the reasons I was asking a lot of the groups tonight what if we don't go with one of your candidates what if you don't bring someone that we want to to hire you know what is that look like uh and and of course the process is just going to keep going until they bring us someone that we want um and we may already have the one that we want in mind I'm not saying that it's interim um there are other people that I have in mind that I've spoken with uh when we were looking for an interim so that's my thought um but certainly not foreclose the idea of um of of going with the groups one of the groups that that recommended or presented tonight so if I can follow up to that to one thing you just said um and remember that one does not preclude the other right so we could start a process to find a candidate and let us a certain amount of time go by and if we realize we have not found someone and we don't feel like we're heading in the right direction at that point you can still hire The Firm it doesn't mean one it's one or the other it could be one then the other if you need it to be yeah no I I that makes a lot of sense I certainly don't want to delay the process too long but I also don't want to rush it because I want to make sure we get the right candidate so um with that um I certainly agree with you but having said that I want to give everybody else a chance to share their thoughts so I I I'm I'm also hesitant on the money um I wasn't sure what we were going to be getting um but it seems there is this proportion about the 30% of the salary of the manager to take in consideration when it comes to fees at least more or less around there and um and so you know I I think at the end of the day it's uh it's a process we were hoping to understand and we've had the presentations went wonderful so thank you very very much it really enlightened me of everything that you guys have access to when it comes to talent that we didn't uh last time around and it didn't go well um I was really hoping to go for a firm because of that because of the expertise because of the contact base and because of the references when it comes to the job versus the money one of the conversations we've had over and over is are we paying right um we know that the answer is no uh and we really thought and discussed this very recently when we um increased the manager's salary uh but we're St at the challenge where we're far away for the from the average that a manager is getting in other municipalities I would like to hear the experts come forward and say well this is actually what goes in consideration to that um and you know we did our process ourselves and and and it fell short and I think I want to have the confidence that the next phase we do bring someone that tells us all the variables that need to be considered when we're thinking about the right money the right candidate for it and the right qualifications to consider I I'm hoping to review the job posting itself um tell us where we're missing you know what what's happening in the fact of the fact that we're we're not getting a lot of feedback from people specifically in Florida is it something that we're missing in terms of uh putting out there with the correct wording and the and the right emphasis on the things that matter to us the most to attract the right person maybe we're not doing that search correctly so I have a lot of question marks that I cannot answer and that's why I continue to go into we need a firm to help us out this is why we hire professionals the same way um that we hire for every position being important this is one of them this is what they do um and and I think that's the value they bring to the table being able to come to come forward and ask these questions and get the answers and move forward once and and for all I I think we got very lucky um with a Mario coming from one of those upand comers that we thought about I believe uh Renee you talked about a positioned uh I think it was Dan Beach uh uh city manager was Anna Garcia she worked here before and I believe that was also her circumstances so uh is this going to be within the current pools of city managers looking for a job yes and also I am curious to see who else so I we don't have that database to go and explore farther and deeper into the current organizations and and people their interest on this go to the recruiting firms for that um especially because I know the process is a professional process put in place and um you know especially when people are considering moving I mean we would just went through that I want to have that sense of someone that comes forward also knowing what they're getting into and a professional guys as both both parts as as a commission and also the candidates so I think the bottom line is I inclin to have uh a firm that guide us through the process and I do have um I would say um my top selection would go is between uh nor long and um cbna I call it the same one the Mac just referenced to those are my two CH top choices um and and yeah again I'm I'm I go back into what that means for us as a budget uh all presentations are wonderful so thank you but I think those two stand out the most for me okay so yeah Echo a lot of the Commissioners said the the the amount of money we're going to spend is substantial but I see a lot of benefit from first off I want to say thank you Brad and Pamela you guys did an awesome job there like Max said there is no bad higher here um I am a little inclined also to think we now seeing the scope of this see that we could do this ourselves um but we've done it a lot in the past and um if we're going to forge forward with not doing a firm I want to have some strong discussions of the requirements of the job posting to make sure we hammer down the right candidate we are going to get I think we've learned a lot here of what it comes to if we decide not to go ahead with a firm um but I think we have a lot of discussions to make going forward if we decide not to go with the fir for me it would if if I had to pick one I am inclined with also Colin uh or Mercer those are my two top picks but right now I'm leaning towards no firm and poat our I'm in favor of doing no firm but I think that we haven't learned from the past and and I I I just think that tonight was fantastic I didn't I didn't expect this this group of people to come along with uh good recommendations and they answered a lot of questions um I I just think that if we're going to do it ourselves then we really have to do a lot of I agree commissioner we need to have a lot of guidance because I think that there there could be personal reasons we hire a city manager presly could be personal reasons why we're going to hire the president city manager that's inter term and I have concerns about that so an outside firm I think would be good and I think an out I am concerned about the money I wasn't on a commission when you guys how much money you passed I don't know about that part I'm concerned but I think an outside firm can help a lot and I think an outside firm can work with a committee that we can set up here and I think it would work good they have it for a year um if they don't um give us if we don't get any candidates from them then they're going to stay on for the whole time so I mean the money prices is important but I think that because we already have an intern manager right now I have a major concern about having an in-house done inous I think I really need to have an outside you could be the best candidate he comes out of it I I do have some concerns about it and I think that we have a group of people here that we can pick Le $30,000 I'm corre that's some out I'm concerned about that um but I think we could get our money's worth and I think that they would be willing to work with a group of people residents that we set up like committees we had in the past that has work except for the last one and the last one I think commissioner Ken vice mayor Kennedy brought up we didn't have the committee to do it look what that got us you know so I I because we for the city manager we already have an intern city manager I would have my concerns so I would really want that reasoning outside fir he might be the right candidate that would you can I can I ask a question uh what about an in between I mean we what about getting help when it comes to put putting a job description that kind of identifies everything we need and with the right salary some sort of an ass when it comes to that I don't know that we might not maybe we don't need absolutely all the services that are listed but maybe there's something we can Outsource to guide us through the process later on um I'm I'm just concerned about arriving to the final uh budget uh within our budget that's a concern but also that it's fair to attract the people that we're looking for you're talking about the salary yeah okay and so the salary you know it has to come from somewhere and I think we already defined that this year it would be okay but long term um do we have the right a salary in place and that's something that I don't think any of us can answer and um I would like to have some help you know in certain areas so is there an opportunity to revise the proposal and not just go all in for $30,000 and sort of PE and choose and I'm I'm thinking out lot I don't know if this is something that is doable but have some sort of a Consulting uh when it comes to these are the key steps that you need to take this is the research we've done and compare your current position your current status as you know a small village um your needs your CPI your CIP sorry so we have a lot of it in place already and based on that that this will be a fair number so then it's legitimized in a way further than ourselves coming with the number so maybe there is a space for an in in between knowing that we all touch phases that we do need help here and there but we all don't feel none of us feel comfortable with the $30,000 clearly that's something we were not expecting um could that be something to be considered well I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone that's that's here with us I think it's probably a separate proposal um that's like an hourly thing maybe an hourly engagement I don't even know um I think that you know if we were to ask for that certainly not certainly again not foreclose to that idea either um but if we were to ask for that I think we would have to ask these groups to to come back to us yeah I'm not saying it's going to be decided tonight yeah but I think just it it stretches us out another month you know cor time is a factor and well again like I mentioned I I I certainly don't want us to rush it I agree also don't want us to be hiring our you know our our permanent uh manager let's say like in August drop them right in the middle of a budget I think it would be August but I think to your point it would stretch the process um which I'm more comfortable than just running with what we've got um I just my experience on the last search was tricky we didn't get that much of uh you know we were at at the end left with two candidates and most of them were from out of the state we we talked about what we wanted so I'm afraid it following into the same bucket and then three four or five months come in and we have two candidates because we're not paying fairly because we're not being clear in what we want um because our benefits are now to the table what people are expecting and so the person that comes in can commit long term and thinks twice about making the move if we do find someone from out of state so it can go either way you know it doesn't mean that because we're going to do it ourselves in three months we'll have the right person I'm hoping that that's the case either way um but I just want to have the right tools to do it right this time I kind of I respond to that real quickly yeah two one thing is ver um uh you have someone there running the village in a competent manner right now and you're not leaning on other staff members so we have that luxury that we did not have in previous true searches and um and while you and you may not have to wait three months to realize we need to go to plan B you might between now and three months get far enough along in the process to know this is not going well don't wait and if you don't have to don't wait until the very end and go we're down to do candidates and we don't want either of them when it feels like this isn't going well bail and go back to plan B yes so I I kind of feel like you have all the cards in your hand this time around now things change so yeah I I I certainly agree with the approach and um uh the way that I was kind of looking at it was like can we kind of narrow look at our options and kind of very specific paths one you know let's let's try and open you know keep open or close the door right now to decide how we're going to afford on whether we are deciding to retain one of these firms at the proposal that we've received uh and the one question that I have with that path I know there's you know we're kind of yeah we're open to the idea but we're not really sure we want to spend the money um the question that I would have then is the threshold question of where does that money come from um go ahead address that yeah to the extent knowing that the that um Mr Childers was going to leave the meeting because of yes we had a conversation earlier today in anticipation of discussions of how you were going to fund this project perfect please um Mr CH has indicated to me that he the money is available we didn't talk about specific sources I can't hear Brad sorry I so let me start again so in anticipation of this possibly coming up Mr Childress and I spoke earlier today um knowing that he was going to extricate himself from this this proceeding and um he indicated to me that the that the money is available I don't know the specific source of where it would come from but he indicated that if this is the the commission's desire to go this route that there is funding available if that's the case then I rather to go with the outside firm I just two things I wanted to add to the just foot for thought the discussion so one is that um to back to your point of having Al Albert in the current intering manager it is true so we have someone competent we I think we all feel comfortable with to manage the day-to-day that could change very quickly also as we know um uh and he could be on another city next week not next week 45 days right I think that's what we have in terms of um notice and I'm just saying out there it could happen or it could not and then will we be left with no manager sort of the same process of starting then so my other and I have to bring it to the table because we discussed this Also regarding the interim manager when we talked about salary was that this is an opportunity to revise the salary and the salary that we currently have is an all income it's all kind of taken all the money that we have it wasn't the original Sal was one with the benefits now we're passing through to the injury manager all the money that we have um matches to that level but I think there's going to be further negotiations to that to have considered with the injury manager if we want to get go to hopefully retain him if that's another thought and again I have to say that L because that's the only opportunity we have right um um so I'm cons I'm I'm I am uh although we can do that and maybe see it Plan B it's all going to be time as well and that's why for me and I think I I I as I'm saying this I I tell this to my I feel more inclined to have a plan now and start the clock now so we can move forward with a decision and the decision might be um that we have a better negotiation with the interim manager it could be that in the along the way we have a wonderful candidate but I want to have those options since now rather than something comes along we have no manager and we start then with the firm uh at the same level that we're now um I also would like to see what if the negotiation is an aspect to be considered with the firms that we heard about today or is usually best practice this is the the the proposition and that that's it event uh I all I can say at this point is they event just like any other vendor yeah so certainly from our perspective when I say our The Village's perspective if if there's a desire of the commission to engage um what one one or more of these firms yeah and provide the services they've described I can certainly go back to them and talk to them and and and see if if their proposals can they can reduce their proposals to to something that's acceptable to the Village um I can't speak for them I've never had that conversation with any of them course if if that's your direction as a as a commission then what I would ask you to do is um is give me a at least a preference order yeah of the firms and then I can have those discussions with them in the order in which you prefer so whoever I know you've indicated some names already yeah and obviously if you can't come to those those agreements I'll I'll move on to the next and Hope hopefully at some point we' have a proposal from one of them in a um at a fee that would be acceptable to to them and to the Village so Brad are you saying to go back and ask them to after having listened to this conversation ask them to Reid for the current job or are you saying to do something like what ver is suggesting and ask them for a price to write a job description for example well I'm not necessarily asking him to to so these are Professional Services so under your code we do not need to seek bids or quotes So the the reason why I asked for proposals from them with quotes so that you would have an idea of of what the costs were yeah and so we weren't going back in I wasn't going back to negotiate a a price and then coming back to you again in the next meeting and then you all telling me it's too much and then having to come back and and go back and forth and we'd be months trying to negotiate with the firm um so what I'm suggesting is if your desire if your consensus at this point is to to try to retain one of these firms and you give me an order of preference of the firms I will reach out to your first preference speak with them you give me some guidance as to what what's your lack of better terms what you're willing to pay and um and I will reach out to those firms talk to them and uh we'll have a discussion a negotiation is to I mean and again these negotiations are tough because you're going to tell me a number and I can't can't go there if you say $20,000 and I go with whichever firm you direct me first and say okay we do we take 15,000 then away I just heard the commissioner say 20 so I I I I I mean we had that issue with when we were negotiating the manager's contract so unfortunately the way the structure is I don't have the authority to decide on my own what how about if you just simply ask each of them to submit their best and and best and last Point yeah yeah best and last give us your best and last we we can certainly do that they can submit that um there's really no reason for us to reinw them you you've talked to them all and then I can just present those to you at a meeting and you can all make a decision and I guess the firms can decide individually whether or not they want to um they want to come up with a different proposal as far as and and they may say no suggest and and um sorry go ahead Mac and I just said and they may and they may step out of the of the of the bidd at that point which is completely understandable so yeah I would I would just ask them you know run down the list and and find out who the the top three groups are based on what we heard tonight go to them and say give give us the give the commission your best and last price and then it's February meeting you guys have a conversation about it one if that's all your direction I can certainly do that go ahead commissioner one of my concerns that I have if we do it just in house as we were doing in the past uh how we who gets how we going to do the background check and the references the references is is the most important to me I want to know how a person has done in his last job well I think that's a process that we can we can establish if we get to the point where we we decide that one of these firms is is not willing to help us we're not going to work with them I know with managers past we've had them submit references or we can ask them we can ask them to submit references and then we can each individually speak with them there's nothing that stops us from doing that I agree with you no I tried that and it didn't work well okay I tried that but it didn't work well if we decide to do the process on our own that's that's the onus is on us so that's that's the choice that we make so look I have no problem um you know in all respect to these groups that have been here with us um I certainly don't want to be insulting to them but I I don't have a problem going back to them and saying give us your best and final I for for anyone that doesn't know any as much about bis game Park you know we are a full we are a 100% residential Community we don't have the incomes that a lot of uh a lot of groups do so it's the we're Frugal um this is really important to us and and we're we we guard our budget very fiercly so I don't have a problem with that um we're only about two weeks away from our February meeting so it's yeah exactly three weeks maybe three maybe three we're not that far away so go ahead Sorry Brad go ahead I'm sorry to interrupt yeah no no go ahead so if if I may just make a suggestion pleas this point instead of instead of naring down any any of the firms I will because you don't know I I don't know which ones are going to back out of course so if you're inclined to possibly still use a firm and just and just so the the records clear so the firms would know because I'm the one that reached out to them and and spoke to them about what we were looking for um based on the direction that you all gave me previously um I worked under the premise and certainly you can change your minds but I just want the firms to understand I worked under the premise that you all were going to retain a firm for for these services so this there was no nothing behind the scenes from my perspective when I was engaging these firms and again that's that's why we bring up the topic of sunshine that we all agreed as a body that we wanted to explore hiring a firm to do this because we've we had some difficulties doing it without a professional firm in the past so we put it put it out to bidest for people to to look at it so what I what I would suggest is let me reach out to the firms yeah let me ask them for their best and final offer um we'll give them a deadline line of um say five days before the for the February hearing so you have those and and The Madam clerk could get them onto the agenda so they're attached to the agenda um under just kind of maybe disc an item that says you know discussion of topic of Village manager because if we decide at this point I probably would do it um old business well either that or we can do it during it could be pulled off a consent we could we could do it by resolution that's and then whatever by whatever mechanism I'll find a method to get it onto the agenda but you'll have that and then you can make a decision at the ne in the February meeting then decision you want to take but broad enough to to allow us to effectuate a discussion say if we get to that point we say okay you know this isn't really what we are looking for now let's talk about what the process is going to be either to look for hourly or for for support in putting together and crafting the position um or if we're just going to do it as as a collegial body and and have whether we decide to involve the resident groups we'll do that even if today if you would have said I'm going with firm a and we're going to accept their proposal still have to I still have to come back with you with an because they have they have a contra we have to enter into a contract right I would still have to come back to you in February and say okay now here's a resolution to approve that contract so what I would like to do is do it by virtue of resolution you can pull it off consent for discussion okay and then if you vote you can vote down the resolution I'll leave the resolution blank as to the firm that you're going to retain okay um but again at that point if you you can vote it down and then choose to do this internally if you choose a firm on that date you'll have and then we can we can move forward otherwise it's going to be another month's time before we come back to try to expedite it as best yeah no I I appreciate that because that timing is is important no matter no matter what position we are currently in time can I tag onto that real quickly oh I'm sorry go ahead I'm say with that timeline there's no loss of time there where we would not be able to start with a firm and start with a firm as long as Brad we could add something in there that if we choose to vote that down then we can still put that a discussion on it to set the parameters of the search right that me we move forward with one or we move forward with the other you can always add that as a discussion item walk it on and well we can add as a discussion item and you can always withdraw it if if get to the point there's no reason to have the discussion if you decide to go with a firm we're moving forward that's what I was just going to say is put that on the I would also have that on the agenda as Ryan just said so you're ready to everyone's ready to go now I'm just going to say that look if they come back with their best and final and it's 20,000 instead of 30,000 I still think it's too much money for the village to spend to do this and I would personally still vote for uh move forward on our own and see where we get and always we can come back and do this as a plan B I'm confident that you guys can do it uh and you can do it better than we did it before because now you have people there who have had experience doing it a couple of times so I think you can do it and that's $20,000 you don't need to spend so best and final sounds great but no one's going to come back and say $10,000 so you know I still think if I were there I'd still be saying we don't need to spend this money let's just move forward so but I agree with Ryan get it on the agenda so you can have that discussion yeah so it's all it's all there and it's ready for us to go if we if we select a firm at that time the resolution will pass and if we don't the discussion item is there and we can set the parameters by which we will select going forward either be by us or by any Jonathan might you want to also do this when When Brad talks to them and says give us your best in final say also give us an alicart price to meet with the commission virtually and uh rewrite the job description and the job post mate too's point about we need help with some key aspects of it ask them for and and some of them may say we don't do alart work like that and some of them might say We'll charge you a couple thousand bucks and you'll get the best ad you ever saw you know the best job description so if that would help you why not use someone to provide that at least so you might want to just ask them for a price on that yeah I think that's that's prudent um if the rest of the commission is interested in in having those options presented to us doesn't hurt to ask to see if the consum doesn't hurt to ask that's right I mean that is not only the job description but also the analysis on the proper salary it's part of the job description but that would be sort of part of the search I need to do the reimbursement or the compensation package is that is that a consensus so what I have is I'm going to reach back out all five firms I can't hear Brad sorry sorry I and it's the last time I'm gonna hear you Brad I want to hear every word I'm hanging on every word I'm gonna be calling you just to bother you you kidding me um no I so if I understand the direction correctly I'm going to reach out and I will do this tomorrow or Friday um but reach out to the five firms um ask them for their best and final price with regards to doing the recruiting services that they've provided and ask them also to give a a a quote for creating a job description and providing a salary analysis for the village to help determine what the salary and benefit should be comp I'd say compensation is the word I would use compensation package because that that includes salary benefits compensation package I think that I think that sounds what I'm going to do is as well any I'm going to ask them to provide an an agreement so they can be reviewed and it can be attached to the agenda as well perfect so when you choose if you choose you have everything we don't have to come back okay all right that sounds good and I dare say that if there are people who aren't interested in moving forward you might just get you might be getting an email from them tomorrow morning Brad saying we listened and we're not interested thanks that might be it'll save me an email exactly exactly great um well I think we have a consensus in direction to go forward Brad um I don't think that there's if there's nothing else uh to discuss um I'd just like to say one more time thank you to everyone that was here with us this evening we're looking forward to continuing the conversation and in a short two to three weeks uh making a decision on on which direction that we will take um so thanks everyone again and I think that brings us to the end of the discussion item so I'd ask for a motion to adjourn I gotta say goodbye again no again don't don't do that it was it was better when you were here in person it was more blubbery in person well it was yeah it was that's how that's where it's more fun thank you Pamela thanks Brad Vero thank you thank you thank you Jonathan it was awesome Dan thank you and good luck Ryan thanks for stepping in and good luck with everything guys good luck with the house uh everything with the house and the closing everything Ma I'm going back in to get to work right now rest of bye thank you thank you motion to adjourn second all in favor I I we're adjourn thanks everybody --------- ##VIDEO ID:QuIeDHUOkxA## I'm pulling up the YouTube yeah there's Mr certa David how are you you're on mute and we're recording so we caught that part how about that better that's better yes how are you all doing Happy New Year by the way happy New Year then we have our our grant writing team to we are hi good afternoon hi there how are you good and you good afternoon everybody hi there thanks for being with us my pleasure okay I think we got everybody we got Paul listening in we got everybody all right it's a party okay so um madam cler are we ready okay great so let's uh call to order our uh our five o'clock Workshop uh today's Wednesday January 15 2025 we are here for uh presentations um on our legislative priorities uh from from groups that we have with us via Zoom um I don't see anyone here in the in the log cab for well we do have someone for public comment so excuse me um so I'm going to just get us started by opening up the public comment if there's anyone that would like to provide that um no we got to know we got to know in the Log Cabin I don't know if there's anyone online there I think this is just our group okay I don't think so great so um let's go ahead and move back uh past public comment get into our presentations um I don't know if uh uh Rob David's going to go first all right David so uh we'll give you the floor to to kind give us an introduction in addition to and supplement uh the email materials that we we all received in advance of the workshop wonderful thank you and and welcome everybody live from Tallahassee Florida and the capital uh first uh first week of committee weeks up here and so we had some some good meetings but um I wanted I wanted to begin because you know I know I know over the last month and a half um we've had you know some concerns about how you know things have been moving from the government relations standpoint and the communication and components like that and I want to address it because I I realized that in my conversations with with many of you over the last and and watching some of the meetings and and the comments from the meeting um I had to really take a look and see what what was actually you know happening here because um I've been doing this for 30 years and I know the system I know how it works and I know uh and and I know the process and I realized that I think uh post uh Mario and pre Albert there were a lot of uh issues with with management and communication with management and the commission and I think that uh probably caused a lot of confusion with regards to what was going on because over the years I you know and uh I I've had a lot of conversations especially with uh commissioner um McDonald and and mayor grth and and Amsler and and commissioner Huntington and everyone with regards to you know being uh wanting more information wanting to know where we stand and so I made it you know my my goal to to do that over the years and what I've discovered is a lot of the the the data the reports the requests that I've made from all of you from from from a polic policy standpoint Appropriations apparently did not get from the management to you and so that's where I think the Gap went so what I just did recently just as of maybe about an hour ago I sent over to your manager Al just just example and this was By Request of commissioner Amsler just to see you know what we we've done uh just just maybe one 12th of the reports and stuff that i' had sent to the previous manager uh requesting and soliciting your all's opinions on things and also guiding you after our uh our monies had come in to call the governor's office and everything and apparently none of that got to you so I just wanted to show you what I did so that you saw that part of the information that you all unfortunately missed out on and I and I and I say that because uh at this point having spoken with the manager and and and knowing Al and and his ethics and uh you know his ability and understanding of this process I think it's very clear that he understands the process and I don't foresee you all having that communication problem anymore I think uh I wanted to send the letter that I sent to you the email outlining the uh the process and how the state lobbyist works and some of the things and how we communicate and some important dates for everybody to have uh just to get it out of way so we don't waste time doing that today because that's not what today is actually about um we can talk about at the end you know making sure that we follow the process the process has always been the same uh and and I just think there was just a just a communication barrier over the last year and a half when when the when the village was in turmoil and and I'm sorry I'm sorry for that but the the efforts did not though that did not hinder our role in our job in Tallahassee on what we do on behalf of the village so I I just wanted to share that now having said that um we had a chance uh to meet myself the manager and the mayor with our our state senators and I met with the state representative Joseph as well just to talk about what's coming up because we always do that you know prior to each session and get the temperature of Tallahassee and just a couple bits of information that I want to share with you now that you know will hopefully help in your discussions tonight because really this is a workshop for for you all to really look at the last year and say hey here are some of our issues that we have not been able to get to or fund or whatever that are important for this community and we need to prioritize these and that's the stuff that that we need to go after at the state level and then throughout the year talk about the stuff we might not get at the state level and see how we can work it through the county process or through grants or maybe through a federal process even though that that's not my position it's m pretty much State I've always been there to help and advise in any way I can um I know that the door has always been open uh for me and all of you and many of you have taken advantage of that I've spoken to each and every one of you about particular issues that you've had and and advice uh how to handle certain things and I hope that you know I gave you the the information that you needed but one of the things that um we were you know led to believe by our our representation up in Tallahassee is that uh it's a tight year um the agencies are being asked to cut in a lot of areas uh programs and projects they're being asked to to limit on those projects and the amount that requesting on each of the projects um one of the things they really want to see is a kind of a state impact that each project might have uh so that it really justifies the state involvement which means they're not really excited about you know the individual Park programs or Recreation or um you know things like that they're more in uh looking for infrastructure roads water uh and and other things that uh do have some kind of a state involvement or state impact and so having said that um I I I think that gives you a good information uh to to sort of begin and talk about you know amongst each other now uh what are some of the things that you've seen over the past year that you know are troubling the village and and use those as our tools and our priorities to move forward and once once we get those then we will immediately get together with the manager establish our uh forms that we need to to submit I've already talked to many of the sponsors uh already who are prepared and ready to get and take our priorities and file them so that's all in place as well uh all we're missing now is the is the discussion and and the commitment from you all as a body in agreeing on a couple of the priorities that you would like to see up in Tallahassee all right David thank you very much for the uh the update um this is so this is remember a workshop so it's kind of open format um I know some of the the emails that you provided to the manager that was forwarded on to us I know um I don't think I ever saw them before so um I don't think that they had been provided to the commission so um you saw the detail that's in each one of those and yeah you know you know it's they're important and it's no certainly yes yeah I agree um and it's I mean it's it's nice to see that you were providing the updates it's unfortunate we didn't get a chance to see them um so I I just kind of like to direct our Focus because I want to focus I want to do as much as we can in the time that we have um you and our grant writing team for um so let me just let me just kind of narrow down um a time frame from your perspective um I know we're talking about going up to session um and I'll open that up to everybody here who wants to talk about it and remind me I know your email sent it out but when do we have to have those kind of Appropriations forms completed by again sure uh the the deadline for the submission of the forms in the house House and Senate have different regulations but for the house which is the more important because they actually have a specific deadline it's February 14 at 5: PM so so we still have good time that's why when asked if the 15th was a good day for you guys to do this I'm fine with that we still have plenty of time and once you decide this evening uh we will work to get those submitted well in advance and good to go I've already solicited our sponsors March 7th would be the time where the attestation forms they they have added a which they always have had in the last couple years attestation forms which basically you know says that the manager is attesting that this is a project this is legitimate you know what we're saying is true about these projects and this is this is what is important uh to the community um there's Bill submission dates but we don't really need to worry about those because as a body we don't really file bills bills are usually filed against the municipalities and we go and fight them along with the Florida League of cities and other municipalities government relations teams um because there's a lot that gets filed as you want as you can see in some of my reports there we're talking about you know hundreds of bills that get filed and we we all have to try to address each one of those uh on behalf of you all so that that's another thing that we do up there on the policy side so right now February 14th is the important date okay and um and again based on the conversations that that you and I have had and just for the benefit of of of everyone here with us now um the the those forms that we're going to be submitting I mean those are those are more focused on being approved for shovel ready projects correct yes uh absolutely shovel ready projects um because that was the problem last year I know many of you have asked well what happened last year well we we pulled out the impossible we actually got some funding in the process but obviously when it gets to the governor's office and he says wait a minute this is designed this is not you know what happens if that project doesn't go through why are we wasting our money so that's that's why that one got you know knocked off the uh the block there but yeah they they want to see stuff that that's ready to go you know by the end of the year and um and I know you all have some things you know based on conversations with all of you and the manager and everybody that um that you need to get done and are ready to go at least in phases that's one of the things that I think is a good thing is to create phases so there's smaller amount you know the phases allow for a smaller allocation but at least it begins the process of addressing your issues okay and so um commissioner amsor had asked what kind of what you mean by shovel ready like where really I think this comes from a place of of how we kind of maximize being successful within this kind of window that we have is what can we send up to the state which will give us the best chance of getting approved and getting money from them yes and from what I understand it's it's it's shovel ready project so of course my mind the first thing my mind went to was our drainage project drainage project is ready um yes just wanted to tou on that you said uh what What U what would you recommend against what we did last year that didn't work out this year round well I mean like I said again last year was was for design so it's almost like you know you're you're asking for that's almost like saying perfect example when when we went after the uh the million dollars for the uh the municipal building that you have there if we would have gone after oh I need money to just create plans and uh you know for what it would look like and have it ready that would not be acceptable to them because they'll spend 300 400,000 and all of a sudden what happens is that if the village says yeah you know what we're not going to do that but what they would do which they did and we got the million dollar was we need this for the capital for the construction of our municipal building we have our money's ready we have our designs ready everything's ready to go we just need the money to get the project moving because we're a small community we don't have commercial uh you know uh help here base and so we yeah so so on that on that point so my my question was so where are we and this is probably for the manager so the plan B of the project the drains project um in order to request so if we want to say we're ready for construction we need the planning and design prior to that we didn't get that money that last year so how do we move forward David correct me if I'm wrong but I I understand that it's all been um the Project's all been identified and is all they're all shovel ready all the all the drainage are shovel ready that's the part that I wasn't understand so if last year we didn't get the the the the money for it that we were hoping because it was in the plan and design stage um then you know did we do the plan and design stage and now we're ready for what we call shovel ready construction phase yeah I understand it was all was already all planned out you already had a plan A A Plan B if we didn't get the money for it and it was for the planning and design yeah I think if I may what what I think commissioner is asking and it's and it's a good question because once again those kind of questions it's very important for you to understand that I'm not going to have the answers to them I'm not in I'm not involved in to dat operations I don't do public works that's that's where you all that but I think what she's asking is if the project that we are now looking at going after the drainage project the construction side of it is the pro is associated with the project that we were looking to get the design for last year and we didn't were allocated to prepare those design plans already and are they they ready to go so that when we do get the money they will be you know we will be ready to move forward or do we not know about that yeah so so David I was looking at the application last year and the application last year was that those they had a a shovel ready project was you know was already to go and that's what was submitted so correct me if I'm wrong if if last year it was just a design that that's what I was told by uh by your manager that that it was the design I have to go back and look at it then I have to go back and look at last year's application yeah so on that point um that that's what I was asking you if that didn't work out because you're saying we were not shovel ready and we need them first to be there we need to invest on the planning and design phase I I think that's important now okay could you could you potentially get away with you know uh a presenting a an Appropriations that sort of has the design in it because it's a quick thing and then the Capital Improvements as well and you can get that done within the year then I think that's something that we could potentially you know push as a shovel ready guys may I say something here yeah go ahead yeah none of those uh drain projects are shovel ready by shovel ready they mean the designs have all gone all the way through the vendors and literally they're ready to bring a back ho in and dig that's what Dave means by shovel ready they are ready to go if we have the funding none of our dra projects are that far along yet they're they're in the design phase and and now what you're seeing phase one phase two phase three that's just basically the order of the different drain projects that we mean to tackle in the coming years but you'll see that none of them are through the design phase yet okay we initially we initially thought this was going back two managers ago that we could come up with one plan that one design that could be duplicated but then we found out they could not even do that that each one had to be its unique design do you know why I mean is there a reason why we I mean that this has always been sort of me scratching my head why don't we go for more money why don't we go for the planning design for several phes and then not ready I understand there might be a matching you know Force us into a budget situation but can we do that can we just put two faces for design and planning if we're not there we cannot can can I can I also put something I also want to say I also want to say you know that Mt Mack is I'm sorry ma commissioner is is absolutely correct in in his assessment there but one of the things he just alluded to and I think could be important is if you're able to create a design plan for the entire project and then break it down into phases so in other words okay it's gonna we'll do a design plan for from from this street all the way you know 10 blocks and it's going to cost us $2 million I'm just throwing numbers out and then we then come in and say okay but we're going to do that over a period of three years but the first phase of that is a $500,000 investment and that's what we're going after now for the construction and everything so you could probably do that rather than do three separate uh designs and stuff so you're saying submit the plans at one time get all the plans done submit them all as one project in phases rather than as separate projects I think the the that is an interesting way to approach it and I think the challenge is going to be that while we initially thought it was kind of a copy paste design they call it does anyone there remember what Mario used to call it I foret like a contractor's way of saying copy and paste but then it but then we learned that we could not do that because each area is so specific and what's underground and blah blah blah and the needs for that area that we couldn't do that anymore we had to do each one as a separate design now if we came up with a design money Vero to do the design for all of them then we could that's what I was asking I don't think that would be this year but then we could present that to Dave next year and say look we've designed all nine projects whatever is left on that list I forget how many are left there and uh we have the design for all of them submit it to him and let him ask for money each year over the coming years then is kind of plug and play correct I just asked that to the manager where he was saying we we can't do that you want to expand on that well it it during the legislative session they're looking for projects that are shovel ready as David has already said so they're they're looking for things that uh you're you're ready to to build um uh you you're competing against all these other cities throughout the State of Florida that are up there in Tallahasse and and the mayor is going to see this when he goes up is is you're you're we're saying hey this is why our project is so important and we're we have all the funding was in place but we don't have enough funding to build it and that's what you're that's the money that you're asking for and and but for the planning we could maybe put for the planning no the planning you're going to have to look for Grants or you going to have to come up with your own money something like that yeah that's not that's not what the legislative session is for I think also get getting a little confused here because this there's more than just identifying phases there was locations picked out we know exactly which streets we were on and then Chris and uh former manager Truitt and uh former public works director Penna were red thinking of redesigning going from French drains to injection Wells and I think that's where this new design is coming in the these were more sh ready I think than we're we're alluding to right now I don't think so I I don't I think they were you have to have the designs all written up we don't have design I mean can anyone produce the plans there would be actual physical plans that we would have in our hands if that were the case so something I just shared I just forwarded to the attention of the manager and I'm he can send it around this was this is the proposal from Bea Architects back from 2023 this actually does out each individual phase Phase 1 a phase 1 B Phase 2 phase three phase four it has costs for all of the for the the length of all the drainage the number of lanes the lane width the medians for every road and the do down to the penny cost of what it's going to cost to do for each one now it may not be engineer engineering structural designs but this is I mean this is I think this is about as close as we're going to get that that sounds pretty shov already to me it's it's it's not the design we were told it needed to be the actual designs for that each specific drain yeah I I'm not I'm not arguing with you Mac I think I'm I'm sure you're right um I'm just saying I think we have this and you know maybe we can share it with David and maybe David can look at it and from your experience David you know maybe you can look at it and say is this going to pass mustard for for the state allocation committees yeah this is ready let me ask a simple question you just read something there and you said what was that now it was from a a planner send I'm gonna send it to you dude it's an architect uh David okay so an architect sent you uh what he said he said that to do whatever it is he gave you how much it was going to cost right for every single Road in in in every single phase correct it's a 39 page document okay but in that document is there as Mack alluded to is there a set of plans that he established or is that a price he was giving us for the design of what he said can I'm looking through I don't think that there's I mean again to to to Max point I don't think that there's a full-blown you know engineering study and design just a I think that was what was being used to try to get the money for last year to to to do that project okay with design get the engineering getting everything ready right that's what that's to we were trying to get to the design thing so we could ask for money that's what I'm trying to say here is that this is not what Dave's asking for to that does not meet the requirement of shovel ready now I will ask you this do you all have any any funds because obviously when you go after the state funds you have to have some kind of contribution the smaller cities maybe can get away with you know 20 30% most of the time they want 50% um but do you have alloc any allocations available to to do at least a phase one of a design as Mac alluded to in other words let's just pick two blocks or whatever it is let's see how much design would cost for that say it's 300,000 do you all have that because then what we could do is go in and say okay the design and construction is going to cost 9 800,000 we're putting in 300 which is the planning and stuff we just need the balance for the construction and all of that will be we will we will be shovel ready by November of this year so it gives you time to do the design the plan and then hire the contractor and then boom you kick into the to to the second part of of what you're asking the money for and you're and you're you're you're getting ready to just break round in November on this little phase I mean do you have that ability to do that so David to answer your question I I I need I'll I can set up a meeting next week between you me and Mario and just to go over this document and just see what we need to do to be shovel ready okay okay and and then also just look also in the coffers to see if you even if it's not for that entire plan because it sounds like that it's for like a whole a big picture maybe just seeing if the what the cost would be for just a two or three block of that plan how much would the design cost and how much would the construction cost and then we can sort of gauge okay the village have you know some money set aside somewhere that they can contribute so that at least while we're going after you know the money in tahaza you could begin the process of getting the design and the engineering plans moving so that you know if we were able to get the money great if we're not at least you have the design plans and then we'll see how we can go about finding the money elsewhere through grants or whatever it might be to do the construction side of it there is a price tag on on face 1B of $800,000 in the CIP yeah see I think that was and that's for that entire that entire plan right yes I would I I would so that's so yeah that's what I think was used last year for the design plan and that so so if the entire design for that entire project is 800,000 let's just assume you take a third of it you're talking about2 $250,000 yeah was like do you all have the capability somewhere because you're going to need it anyway and we we'll that as the matching dollars to to get that going well can we use grants for some of that match Dave that's our next conversation is with the grant writer about dovetailing these both of you in together because we don't have to come up with the money out of our own Reserve we could come up with it from grant money and because that that's the other part of this conversation I'm going to go throw a little wrench into something here just because it needs to be said out loud um this is a yearlong plan to replace the drains and of course if we when if when we go septic to sewer that's going to rip up all these drains because then the roads get ripped up for sewer and all the money we would have spent on all of these drains which are they're French drains they are not removing water from the village they are simply storing it underground as much as we can and they're still flooding even when the drains are in place and that's everyone's frustration is we spent all that money on a drain my Street's still flooding well it doesn't solve the problem because it's not removing water so you know should we be working harder on that permanent fix rather than this temporary fix that we know a is not sufficient and B will just be money literally down the the proverbial drain uh at a future date when the real fix comes into play that's that's the awkward part of all of us right we're trying to like streets are flooding do something about it here's a solution that's not really a solution and then it's just going to be dragged out of the ground when we do go to sewers so how do we how do we navigate all of that the one thing you'll find uh commissioner also because you're correct um one of the things you'll find is that uh government never does anything that makes sense so in other words the uh the TR me I've been doing this five years I know now I know okay my own list there's been projects where they've done resurfacing okay and then like a year later they rip it all up to put in the whatever so so here's the problem though you don't know in government when they're going to get to it so the problem you have is from now to a year or two or three or four the roads get worse and then now accidents and now deaths and now so you unfortunately have to try to put a Band-Aid until the problem is fixed now you're specifically talking about septic to sewer that issue as you know since you've been here they've been trying to work on that we've had conversations with uh our our former Senator piso who was in our district and has moved in another district and then our Senator Jones and we just had that recent conversation with Senator Jones and the mayor and myself and the manager uh that is still something that they know they need to do because it only make sense they've got to find a way to allocate dollars find a plan or whatever it might be to to address the septic to sewer especially as they start now having to resurface and fix roads and do all that kind of stuff so can I can I add something to that uh David yes so the uh we recently not recently since last year we've been hearing uh the adaptation action area uh on the on the canal and they have been doing a study and this is coming from let me tell you uh Miami day water and sore Department related to septic T seur this is an an an ongoing issue and and research and planning and design on their on their side trying to understand what they can convert what the infrastructure looks like and listening to both uh El portel Miami Shores and then us um you recently asked uh Mr manager an email for them to share the latest presentation the last one that was done last year was regarding Miami Shores now included us and I haven't seen the presentation but um we're closer than you think uh with this I mean at that time when they came forward uh the whole conversation was we we might have a priority to go and ask for funds and just to read out loud at then this again is from last year the saying the AAA planning process is an excellent format for highlight in needs and has been effective and garnering funding for sewer expansion the plan recently developed in the Little River adaptation area determined that the septic dor conversion was a priority need and subsequently funding was received from FD and so I think because that started in El portel then Miami shortes like I said last year and this year it's us we might be in the perfect opportunity to engage with them and understand what the planning and design on their s side kind of and all the research kind of provided and see you know what comes out of that on that side to make it a priority to go and ask for the funding yeah I I definitely think that we probably should take a proactive stand which we have I mean we're meeting with our legislator and everything but maybe more pre proactive with the county uh you know and the mayor I know you've talked to uh you know the commissioner uh too as well and a lot of things but so that's something maybe get them involved uh in on as well but yet being proactive but even with that even even as they move forward and they're including us in that dialogue by the time they get to making a decision they get to Planning by the time anything even ask for money I in my experience you're talking six years seven years five years you know what I mean it depends so do we know any updates from have you had a conversation maybe for with um elportal of any advancements from the study the last conversation that I had was well wasn't even a conversation it was kind of anecdotal from Miami Shores about changes to the to the Waterway here and removing a potential I I have no idea where this is because I haven't spoken with the mayor over there but again anecdotally I heard that they were planning or proposing to remove the dam and um open that water way to make it Bay AIS so that's the last I'd heard about those was just a couple weeks ago I think that we might be in the perfect opportunity to grab all the efforts that happening already um that you know completely funded by the county that that's not our money that would put us in a priority to go and request for sew conversion at least in certain areas that are highlighted by the study that would be the step number one to your point back of not just going for money to Designed roads and then we break them in order to address you know the county comes later and does this um we recently saw that I don't know if you guys remember but Griff and Boulevard was brand new asphalt yeah and then you know what was it a year plus maybe later came through that they needed more drainage system install in the corner of 113th so um how do we move forward in terms of coordinating this well then they came back and did it a second time if you recall so they tore that street up twice after it was redone yeah so I think there's some few kind of asteris in terms of there stuff happening in the county in terms of uh septic to to sewer conversion uh let's see where that stand let's understand if that puts us in a better position to ask for money and then the question is where the money comes from then grants and see um also your efforts David and I understand it wouldn't be for planning and design but then at least we can say well that then let's leave it for the next two years when actually planning and design happen from the county that they pay for the portion let's not focus on the drain system for now because at some point that's coming it might be two years we waited already too I mean since I've been here talking about the same thing but they're closer to come to a conclusion so I agree but you're in a catch 22 because you know you know as much as we like to rely on government it's it's it's lying government no so so why most every one will do these little projects as long as they can get some State help so we can at least Band-Aid so that people aren't sitting there taking boats to the front home front of their homes to get in during a storm or a flood or whatever it is um so it's it's your call I mean if I make a recommendation at least now on the topic of the drainage what I would do is you have a report sitting there which sounds like it's support for the entire dra program which is at $800,000 thing see what it would be to just do it in phases cost charge for the planning whatever and how long it would take him to I don't that long I hope not uh and then uh basically submit that project with the design and the actual construction of phase one and we can put a number to that and then you all need to decide in your coffers what your match is going to be and that match is what we will use or we will say to the state is is the money that's going to the actual design and planning of it we're looking for help from the state to get the construction part once that's done which we estimate the design and planning will be done by July you know August and then we will have a contractor in place and we will be able to break round in November Dave does that mean when we when we say we're shovel ready on a project and we would like to get a grant for matching portion do we have to have that Grant solidified to show them we that we're going to use that or do we have to say we're prepared to use our own money if we don't get a grant yes you you have to say it's going to be is secured you know like you broke up I didn't hear what you said you'll have to use that your own money the local money until that Grant is secured so I know like got they what they call it but for the road monies you have that already so you can use that as part of the thing I mean so that's how I would do it and we can always pull the project later during the process if we have to if you come to the conclusion that oh we can't do this but at least we submit it we try to move forward with a phase one we can generate a couple bucks to handle do the planning for that like you said Mac for the first three blocks or something and then part of what we're requesting is the actual construction side so we're contributing 250 or 300 but we're asking you know uh from for 500 more from the state to help us do the actual construction so on the point of uh on the I guess since we brought up the grants and and I want to be you know sensitive to um to our grant writing team's time as well um I don't want to move us off the conversation but I do would like to give them an opportunity to chime in on this and you know provide us with any information that might be helpful from their perspective too since I see you know we do have a special commission meeting after this um so if no one's opposed uh I I'd like to give them an opportunity to speak up if that's all right are we going to have an opportunity at the before we're done with this meeting Jonathan to list the other things that we think are priorities because all we've talked about so far are drains yeah sounds like Dave was really clear he wants like a list yeah look I I I agree we have to do that so let's uh I don't possible you know just once again because I'm in trans I'm going to be in transit too um you'll you'll also see and they'll and they'll probably verify this grants and the state lobbying are two completely different things and they'll explain that to you you we focus on the state and the Appropriations process we might identify a few opportunities grant opportunities and I always give them to the managers but then he'll give them to the grant writers and then they take it from there but if we can you know maybe discuss another project real quick I because because we I think we we understand with the drainage where we have to go with that um I know another one I think from what I'm hearing from all of you are some of the road issues I mean is that another possible priority that you'd like to to take a look at well I'll let them chime in but since I brought it up for me it's traffic uh all the different ways that we can control limit the amount of traffic that comes into the village control traffic while it's when it's inside the village we recently uh signed our agreement with the county so we can move forward unilaterally on things as well but now it's time to get something done to people feel stra safer walking the streets of biscane Park so anything related to Traffic Safety I think would be a big gain um and that might include roundabouts and some other things that would slow traffic down but none of those are shovel ready they're just right now they're you know nothing is shovel ready in that regard well I had a conversation with David yesterday and David you were uh alluding to that when it comes to Road repair we don't actually have to be shovel ready for that it's more of a self-explanatory thing with the roads are in disrepair you understand what the work is to be done well yeah you know with roads it's really about Paving repaving and and you know getting the roads back to a smooth ride so people don't you know hurt their cars clear themselves so that's something that I think you know that's fairly easy to I don't think you have to have a planning and design phase to to to pave a road you just have to pave the road you need the money so so what do you need that's a PRI priority uh for me as well but what do you need to move forward in that sense what do you go for how much money how does it work so the commission has to decide with regards to the roads how much money they have either in the transportation fund or whatever that they you get a part of whatever that they can allocate to that process as well and once we know that number then you know we go in and say okay if it's 200 or 300,000 let's ask for another $400,000 and then we'll have $700,000 and whatever that gets us 700,000 that's phase one for our roads yeah I think that's a great idea because we already have a certain number in our CIP to maximize our dollar to use that to to maximize the impact on the village it's a great idea how much money do we have now on the 200,000 this year do you have it on the CIP you have it open yes so I don't know you know once again I'm not a road guy but I don't know what if we have 200 that we're participating and we're small City and I can convince them you know this 50% is going to be crazy we can go after let's say 200 say we go after another 400 say we go after $600,000 and we participate to how much Road can $600,000 help that's the the question um I mean you can ask someone whoever does your road whoever the contractor that would do the road work and stuff that they'll probably at one time I was given a figure of it was a million dollars a month but that incl included sidewalks and yeah yeah that's that's probably the so I'm I'm sure it's much less but I'll have to get that figure for you David okay yeah and and that's it so whatever whatever he says then we'll just say phase one's going to you know cover four blocks of Paving block you know in the community and uh and we have ,000 maybe we you guys can contribute another 50 from your budget or 100 whatever it is you know what I mean and we can raise that well between this year and last year it was 230 30 from last year was unspent and 200 from this year oh so it's 430 where do you see that 230 total where do you see that um Road repair I don't know if these have line items I was trying to uh understand yeah so we have the roadways at the bottom you have public work we have Road repair upgrades yeah a line item and that is$ 18 million yeah but in uh 2024 you had 30,000 in 2025 you have 200,000 okay so you're adding those to just say we have 230 230 okay so and then what what do you do so David you said and then we come up to an a number but so how do you get to that number so from 230 you're how do you get to 800,000 so I I I figured maybe 600,000 so you're basically doing 30% match so you know uh that's fairly okay for a smaller Community I guess they they always like to see 50% but um I think you know try to convince the importance of it um and go after you know uh 600,000 you all are coming up with 230 the balance we're requesting from the state and you might all want to say you know what let's let's allocate another 50 or 100 Grand from our B our budget we bring it up to 42% match and then at that at that stage you go what do you need to go and and sort of make your point valid and make it like relevant we have forms that ask questions which ask for the actual description of the project so we basically fill those forms out in the areas of Capital Construction you know we put the wordage that okay this is what we're doing we're putting this much asphalt we're doing this we're doing that and it outlines and then when I go to argue the point when you all come up some of you to Tallahasse you all will then justify the need for yeah and so are we we ready at that stage to be able to provide that all the feedback that he would need by the deadline yeah I'll get with um David as I said in you know um make sure we move forward and work on the project and also get for Mario and to get some and Public Works would probably be able to help fill the format because they probably know exactly what it would take to to do so so that takes two $230,000 of the money that we have in the CIP um and you're saying we can get amount matching up to 600 well IA we can ask yeah yes all right and that would be CH for Road repairs nothing related to drains no but we can also then have another project dealing with the drains in the way suggested before and then there's our two projects that we can actually go after the drains were also addressed in certain areas in the village not necessarily where all the damages are so that this money could start on on a different area not necessarily the same we recognize need to be touched by the drains so we're not having to redo that section if I'm I'm clear because once you once like the first phase we had was certain seven I think seven drains so Seven Corners were touched um if we recognize the village has a lot more than just seven additional drains or that need to areas that need to be addressed in terms of um uh damage so let's start with those let's not touch the trains since we're there is a lot of homework to be done and understanding who can pay for that and we wouldn't have to touch it twice it's not something that we are going to have to break again right that's the idea I mean I like we we since we have so much we have a good amount of money in the CIP for the roads and it sounds like it might be the wrong word to use but easier to try and get the money for the roads like it seems like it um so I do like the idea lot of kind of prioritizing that I do want to if if we have kind of an agreement agreement on that I do want to make sure we talk for just a minute about traffic because I would like um David your input and whether whether you have a take on this you know I I don't know but because I know um commissioner Kennedy or vice mayor Kennedy um mentioned the Ila that we just entered into that gives us a little bit more control over what we can do with our traffic calming measures um and attached to our Ila we have engineering guidelines that we have to follow when we input those things into our roads so in essence and this is a bit of an end-around way of trying to get to it in essence we have the engineering studies because we have to follow them to a te so David again I don't know if this is something you probably need to think about but if we wanted to hypothetically speaking I'm not saying this is what we would do go and get a traffic circle and say you know we want a Lobby for a traffic circle uh we have engineer ing guidelines in our Ila that says how we have to build it could we put that forth for to try and go get funding really Point Jonathan what that that's a really good point that we had that we have them they were provided to us we have to follow them we're required to follow them yeah yeah keep in mind though now we have to have a state impact so Road Safety State impact work with me David is it is it possible to make some of those calming devices part of the road that you're doing the road work on I in theory yes we'd have to decide which road we're doing the work on and whether it's justified in putting them there but in theory I think yes so what about the the study that we talked about is there there an opportunity to put that as and again I don't know um David if this comes from you or the grand writers help you know trying to allocate some money but or from our budget are you okay yes well um but uh we're going to need a traffic study that determines that well if do we need a circle you know a roundabout maybe it's not that maybe it's uh uh some other solution and some other area so the money for that study itself is that something that we can go and include as as you know traffic mitigation I don't know no that that be tough because it's just a study yeah so so but in in one of the questions in the Forum is going to be do you have any uh documented need for whatever you're doing yeah so if you're saying that you have these engineering plans for these Comming devices maybe you can incorporate that uh with whoever you're going to get to do the road and let them give you sort of a a contractor give you a pricing on that and then you actually solidify the contractor the next month or so or two and now you have have a contractor ready to go and move forward for this road and all we're waiting for is the money from the state and if we don't get the money from the state we got to figure out if there's grants or something else where we go after it again next year whatever it might be but that could be a process that you all could take on this as well this way then it accomplishes uh commissioner McDonald's uh uh um you know needs or ideas and it also accomplishes the rest of the commission's thought and commissioner hunting's idea of getting the roads you know some of the roads repaired you're you're incorporating both in in a particular area so you're doing three blocks or something of road work where you have one or two caling devices within those two yeah I want to make a real quick a real quick question I guess while there's a pause here um David you started your portion of the meeting tonight by telling us that you've been sending reports that didn't make their way to the commission and that's really unfortunate for us to find out now thanks for letting us know that my question is can you just automatically always send them to every commissioner just do that and that that way you don't have to depend on someone else to do their job well absolutely and keep in mind okay first of all I have to say this because I know Matt you you and I are one of the first ones that actually talked when you came in and you were very adamant you know about this and I promised that we would do this that's why I was doing it and then when you were very concerned that that wasn't happening I was like why is he so upset that this is not happening I've been doing it and now I'm realizing that clearly it wasn't getting to you so I traditionally I had no Direction other than go to the manager so if if everybody's telling me to send it to the manager with a copy to the commission I would be happy to do that Brad are you there is there a problem with Dave sending these directly to us without going through the manager I am here vice mayor I mean they they they generally should go through the manager and the manager should be Distributing them through the commissioner um because this's he's a vendor of the village so the vendors shouldn't be having direct communication with individual commission I'm pretty confident knowing knowing Al you're gonna be okay I mean just proof is just the last few weeks he's given everything that I've sent to you and and things and stuff so so um I I think you're going to be okay and you know what okay but that here here's the I'm always worried about I'm not wor okay so I'm not worried about Al giving them to us right right I'm worried about when Al's gone in six weeks and we have a new manager and then it's not happening again so if it's possible if we're allowed if the commission is allowed to by consensus or Vote or whatever say we want those reports sent directly by the vendor to us I think we should do that so that way we aren't in this position ever again may I ask councel possible solution could it be that I address it and send it to the manager with a cc to the commission it's it's it's the same I mean it's that's yeah I I just I if I can add one thing um and you and I spoke about this David too we have reports in our commission meetings as well um you know and there have been meetings and the agenda have been noted not to have reports from um from you specifically you have the alternative to come and push something forward and come and present maybe a status on a quarterly basis just so the to make sure that we kind of track whatever progress is done um is that something that can be done so you you can have you can do that um David the other option just trying to throw something simple out what you could copy me as well on whatever you send to the manager okay and um this way at least I can facilitate it getting to the commission yeah if through the manager or otherwise that would probably be better with commissioner amler you know as I mentioned you before uh during session everything time is very extremely valuable it moves quick sometimes I just can't take two hours or an hour and a half to come and say hey by the way I sent you this so I now what I can do is do what we've done in the past where I've sent the stuff whether I'll send it to the attorney as well and he can get it to you you call me and say Dave what about this issue here this is this is of interest to me and I talk to you about it I said okay here's what I think you should do here's what I think you can do and I and I give everybody advice I know you've done that with me on form six I know Ma's done that with me on three four five different um projects so I could do that that's not a problem that's just a phone call that I'm having with you and and make that happen and then every so often when I can yeah I'll be happy to come before the commission like I've always had I've never not I've never denied that you know whenever you asked me to come before and and and and report on something so I think that might be a great recommendation that the attorney just made uh to send a cc to him and then he can just you know yeah I also want to make sure that at some point we have something in written from you when whenever that's possible either it's twice a year I mean you define whatever dates work best based on that workflow that you have but we need to be better are are just putting together the ne you know for the next manager or the future manager or uh just the commission itself sort of the history of what's going on because here we are trying to understand what happened and setting up a meeting with the previous manager I think it's very helpful to understand the steps that were taken who was you know a full report from your behalf what efforts were there so we can continue building on that moving forward I think if you take a look at what I sent you tonight the the just the 14 I know the detail you see and that's done often as often as I possibly can yeah timeline but so you do see that that's already being done it was just unfortunate that it wasn't getting to you and but hopefully that will change and that this will not be an issue for the commission um so I know our time is short here um we've covered a couple of of kind of high ticket items some things that um David can work on for us uh drainage Roads Traffic some of those things I I'd like to open it up very quickly if there's any other things that we want to bring up that we want to focus on I mean again knowing our time is short and knowing what we're kind of prioritizing in the immediate future um but I don't want to Rob anybody the opportunity to to bring up any other um areas that they want to discuss so I'm just going to kind of open it up thank those are all of mine yeah no and and and just a broader question I don't know if you're familiar uh with the CIP that we put together David uh because I was wondering if you could when you see that what comes to mind what are we missing I always don't know what I I don't know right what what I'm not asking um like you have a great idea maybe consolidating traffic and the uh Road improvements um if there's anything else you know that you see in the CIP that we were missing and that could be addressed somehow um I would ask you to to to let us know keep in mind I think I think the manager and your public works and those folks probably be more better suited to give you that I'm just giving you just Dave I'm you know because I'm I'm a business guy I I do development so I just give you some ideas but I'm not going to be an expert in identifying a lot of the stuff that the village needs because I I I don't participate in the day-to-day activities and I'm not part of those funds and what they're actually you know but but your manager and your and and you know the folks that associate with could can certainly tell you but I will always give you my opinion if I'm looking at something to say oh yeah they're they're right or um okay that sounds good or maybe you can do no the CIP already has the priorities we've already done that that the work and you see it breaking down by Department of what our goals are and what we want to get I guess what I'm asking is when you see that you can come up with strategies and ideas to how to consolidate some of them maybe um you know how to face them in a better way um what's more relevant this year versus previous year you mentioned you know this year's specifically it's more you know regarding infrastructure roads and floods and so anything that has to do with that is going to you know cover more uh of the attention that is needed so I would just um I don't know uh Albert does uh David have rcip if not I I mean we can share with you I would just keep it in mind that that's the work we did already with the manager prior to highlight the priorities and the idea now is how do we strategize between you the lobbies the money we have to make it happen I will I will consult with the manager and we will we will sit together on a lot of this stuff and he'll share with me and I'll give my thoughts on this and then you know tonight hopefully you'll you'll all give me directive on those two projects right there to start at least working on and moving forward and then we'll work together with the manager to see how we can you know sew up the the loose um areas of of those projects to get it ready for what we need you know to have up in up in Tallahassee so um and and that's it and then you know and then other projects I'll always be there and maybe I'll recommend to county or help or or go here or you might say hey Dave I can't get this done here on the local thing and I can help in some way I'll always do that um you know so um I have a I have a a longterm relationship with you all and and I want to help in any way I can so so before before we move on because I know we're after 6:00 and we got to get to our special meeting first of all Robert you're you and your group um maybe you can join us for for you know a presentation or something at one of our regular commission meetings so we can have some time with you uh I do apologize we we didn't have a lot of time to spend with you so again please accept my apologies Robert um so I'm getting bumped I think so it's like I'm the tonight's show okay no worries you you guys will be nicer next time really nice because you bumped us this time right that's right um You this this is a really bad joke but I think they took you for granted actually a pretty good joke actually great joke you might want steal that one Robert put that your that's I will Robert thank you so listen before we wrap up really quickly I just wanted to bring this up um because I know I expressed my intent U and I've talked to to David about about joining him in session in a couple of weeks um and I know we've had this discussion about if are more than one of us there we kind of need to game plan so I wanted to ask any of the other Commissioners if you had an intention or desire to go up at the same time that I'm planning on being there I can't and I'm very happy that you can represent us there some no glad you're representing us okay um well I appreciate that from from David and M mind discussion with him it sounds like I don't think a best this game park has had anybody up there in like over two decades so I'm excited to get up there and and and try and help us out um I think I think the last person up there was uh mayor childis I I do plan in the future to go up okay well we can we'll we'll game plan it for when when we have more than one person um all right unless anybody has anything else I think we need to adjourn our Workshop but I'll I'll open it up anybody else have anything before we move on thank you very much everyone okay David thanks for being here Robert thank you to your in group you you group are joining us we'll we'll get something on for you to join us no I appreciate by the way want to say I would appreciate listening to David and grants and lobbying do come together so hopefully you know we can talk now that I met him you know through here that we can talk and and uh work with the manager together yeah I was gonna say I'm glad to hear that and I'm I'm looking forward to having you two kind of game plan some things for us um okay all right well thanks everybody for joining us for the workshop I think we are adjourned for six o'clock do I need to log off this zoom and come into a different one or is it the same Zoom the clerk is saying yes we have to log this one she launch the new one I'll see you guys in a minute okay great we're we're adjourned and we'll get ready for our six o'clock in a second thanks everyone all of the participants um log off and come in on the other link directed to the special commission meeting I don't